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Bucky was leaving for London tomorrow and as much as Gale hated to think it, preferred to reframe it as a much-needed break for both of them, he was sick and fucking tired of him. Bucky’d spent the last few days shredding through Gale’s patience and goodwill like a wheels-up landing. Half of him wondered why the Colonel hadn’t snatched his leave back and given him the writeup so fierce it’d crack the earth—the other half knew exactly why. Just like Gale and everyone else on base, he wanted Bucky out.
After turning down Bucky’s grating, pleading, request for Gale to join him at the O-Club for the third goddamn night in a row, Gale told Bucky that he was going to have a night in. Alone.
If he were feeling more charitable, Gale might have invited him to stay back too, but all his charitability had shriveled up at the smell of Bucky’s whiskey breath at breakfast that morning, at the arguments he kept trying to pick with anyone who came into his path, at the cold stares he kept giving the new pilots who’d shipped in that week. He was in a tailspin, and Gale needed to get away before he started feeling like Bucky’s failures were his, too.
Bucky’d just set his shoulders and ran a hand over his moustache. “Okay, Buck,” he said. “Have fun missing out.”
–
Sat on his bunk, Gale tried again and again to read the same page of his book, but the words kept dancing away and his heart rate spiked at any sound he picked up from outside. Childishly, he felt that it was somehow Bucky’s fault. The black hole of him sucked up not only all of Gale’s peace, but his capacity to concentrate. He tossed the book at the foot of his bed, where it clanked dully against the metal bars and flopped facedown onto the thin, scratchy wool blanket. He tried lying down on his side with no luck. His clothing pulled at him in strange places while the light above him swung almost imperceptibly, buzzing a high-pitched whine that curled around his ears and his brain stem.
He sat up abruptly and punched his thin pillow, so thin that there was barely a dent where he’d heaved his fist. Gale’s blood pulsed. He punched it again, again, until his knuckles clanged against metal by mistake, sending a shooting red pain up his arm.
Bucky’s fault, he thought, as his hand throbbed. It was Bucky’s fault, and it wouldn’t get better until he got shipped off to London where he could drink and dance and fuck and vomit his problems out, and the oily spectre of his misery that hung heavy over the entire base would dissipate, and Gale would feel fine again.
But right now, he needed to get out. Out of the bunkhouse, out of his head.
–
Summer was hanging around a little longer than Gale expected for somewhere so close to the North Sea. The air carried the promise of autumn, the scent of woodsmoke and turning leaves, of wet soil, but the frost and the chill still held off. With the full moon hung low in the sky, fat and yellow as butter, it was a perfect night to walk.
He’d go out walking back in Casper when he just couldn’t take the oppressive feeling of home, when the scent of his own air and turn of the light became unfamiliar and sour. When he needed to clear his mind beyond everything but his feet stepping one after the other.
There were scores of little clearings at the edge of the forests bordering the airfield where a few trees had grown bold and ventured out from the canopy. Within them, mushrooms grew in rings in the moss among the underbrush, fruiting bushes with their offerings slowly withering away through the season’s slow end.
The soft earth cushioned his regulation leather boots, and Gale could turn around as he stepped, watching the path of his footprints like he’d watch for rabbit prints in the first snow of the year.
“I thought you were having a quiet night in.” Gale whipped his head around to find Bucky leaned against a hefty beech tree, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His flask dangled from his long fingers, glinting maliciously in the moonlight.
“I am.”
“Well,” Bucky said, tipping himself upright, “I don’t know about you, but this looks like out to me, Buck.”
Gale didn’t even want to dignify him with a response. He inhaled slowly through his lips, out through his nose, like a smoker of cold, clean air.
“I said it looks—”
“I heard you.”
Bucky’s face crumpled into a look of displeasure. “Why are you avoiding me?” he asked, and then he hiccuped, swaying a little where he was planted in the mossy ground.
“You’re being childish.”
Bucky made an enormous show of rolling his eyes. “Sure, Buck. I’m the one being childish. You won’t come to London with me. That’s fine,” he threw his hands up. “I’ll make my own fun. But here? You won’t come out to the O-Club. You—”
“You got plenty of friends, John.” He knew he chose the wrong words as soon as they left his lips.
Bucky’s expression darkened, his wide mouth pulling up all tight. “Not so many, now, Buck.”
Gale’s face burned a little. “Still,” he muttered.
“Still what?” Bucky took a step forward. The leaves threw dagger shadows across his body.
He felt alone with Bucky, so why not just be alone. “Whatever. You’re drunk.”
“Don’t you change the subject,” Bucky threatened. “ And anyway, I don’t see what that has to do with you,” he waved his hands, smacking a low-hanging branch in his way. “You, sneaking and slinking off whenever I show up.”
Gale gave him the ugliest, most poisonous look he could muster. He imagined the leaves around his feet withering and dying from the pulsing waves of anger that suddenly overwhelmed him, choked him. He breathed slow again, wishing for a wisp of fog to follow and dissipate and prove that he was calm.
“Well, Bucky,” he gritted out. Telling the facts wasn’t what was hard. It was how he felt about them that made him feel like he was being split open. “It’s hard being around you right now.”
“Oh, is it?” Bucky drew himself up to his full height, and while he wasn’t much taller than Gale, he pulled his broad shoulders back to cast a heavy, dangerous shadow. “How d’you think I feel, Buck? I’m around me all the time.”
Something inside Gale was beginning to fray. “What do you mean,” he asked. He didn’t know why. He didn’t want to hear the answer.
“You sit in your ivory tower,” Bucky pointed at him with one, long finger, holding it up near his face and squinting down it like the barrel of a gun. “With a thousand steps up to the tippy-top, where you can get away from me. Whenever you want.” He screwed open the top of his flask and took a swig. The burning scent made Gale’s nerves twitch, his eyes water. “But I don’t have a choice, Buck. I’m down here in the mud.”
Gale’s hackles raised. “Oh, please,” he spat. “You follow me everywhere. Like a dog. And why? So you can pretend I’m happy to watch you whore yourself out to the things that’ll destroy you?”
“I need you to help me.” Bucky took another shaky step towards him, shrinking in on himself, his palms up like a poor pilgrim begging for benediction.
“You don’t need me,” Gale insisted. He didn’t know how to help. The thought terrified him—with practice, with training, flying and mathematics smoothed into ease, flattened into comprehension. Bucky was impossible for him to understand. It felt like whenever Gale learned something about him, it contradicted something he already knew. “You need to get a hold over yourself.”
“I can’t escape,” Bucky gripped his head in his hands. “Every night I try, Buck, but I can’t drink it away, I can’t—”
“Then stop trying!” Gale was almost panting. His heart was thundering, the back of his neck prickling with sweat.
“Oh, you’re funny, Buck. You really are. Don’t ever let ‘em tell you otherwise.” Bucky wasn’t laughing. His face was stony-set. “You think I could get up in the morning without—” He gestured to his flask.
Gale wanted to slap the damn thing out of his hand. It glistened at him mockingly. “Believe it or not, Bucky,” he choked out. “I find a way to do it.”
“Well, we can’t all be Saint Cleven, can we. Can’t all be good.” Bucky looked down, grinding his heel in the mossy dirt like a kid left alone on the playground. “I can’t. Figure you’ll up and run off, soon. Leave me just like you left your daddy behind.”
Gale had grabbed him by the collar and thrown him against the mighty beech tree before he could even look up. Bucky gasped for air, the wind knocked clear out of him.
“You wanna talk about my father?” Gale spat. Spittle flew from his mouth, hitting Bucky in the face. Little droplets caught on his skin and in his moustache and twinkled like tiny stars. “Let’s talk about yours, Bucky. Namely, I don’t think your daddy hit you enough.” Bucky writhed under his grip, looking down at him from his narrow, hooded eyes.
“Yeah? Yours hit you just the right amount, then?”
Gale’s father was a man bereft. He lacked. He lacked any discipline for himself, so he had none to give to Gale. No reliability. No structure. No honesty. Gale tried when he was young to complete him, fill the black hole inside him with all the trust, all the obedience he could give. Gale tried until he was nearly empty as his father was.
“No,” he said honestly. Gale sometimes wished his father had hit him—then he could be free, could hate him and move on instead of being stuck with the sick, soggy pity he harbored in his chest for that incomplete man who raised him, the molten anger it’d flare into. “He didn’t need to at all.”
“So you were just born better, huh,” Bucky laughed mirthlessly. “Born neutered, I think.”
He reached between their bodies, fumbling blindly for Gale’s crotch with one big, clammy hand. His fingertips grazed Gale’s cock and on a hair trigger, Gale snarled and threw Bucky back against the tree, using the meat of his forearm to press against Bucky’s Adam’s apple, forcing his breaths into wheezy gasps as his face grew red. His flask fell to the ground, flashing in the light, as his long fingers scrabbled uselessly at the papery bark of the tree behind him.
Gale pulled himself away. Bucky doubled over, wheezing, thick saliva spilling clear and shiny from his swollen lips to the forest floor. Gale stared, unmoving, as he dry heaved and spat a gummy glob of saliva into the little puddle between his shoes.
“There’s something fuckin’ wrong with you,” Gale hissed. His body was alight and pulsing with blood and adrenaline. He could taste iron in his breath, his own mouth thick and wet. He spat at the ground, missing the puddle, and landing on the cuff of Bucky’s pants.
“Aw, Buck,” Bucky pulled his sparse eyebrows together in a look of pity. “What’d you go and do a thing like that for?”
Gale could rip his own skin off, he really could. Every part of him itched. Bucky came at him, spoiling for a fight, and just as Gale’s resolve shattered, he rolled over. He needed his resistance, his friction, his dissent. Bucky had him tripping over his own feet, falling into shadows where he expected solid ground.
“If there’s something so wrong with me,” Bucky reached one of those big hands out between the two of them. And Gale was frozen, helpless, as he hooked his pointer finger under Gale’s tie and tugged oh so gently. “Why don’t you help me fix it?”
With a mind of its own, Gale’s own hand flew up to grip Bucky’s wrist like a vice. He willed his hand molten hot, willed burns onto Bucky’s skin as he squeezed, feeling the little bones chafe together like jacks in a bag. Bucky’s mouth fell open in a silent groan of pain, panting, with his tongue nearly breaching his lips, until Gale looked down. Bucky was half-hard in his trousers.
Gale dropped him like Bucky was the one burning. His eyes kept darting—he couldn’t stop looking—the bulge in Bucky’s pants— “You’re sick, John,” he spat.
“Yeah, I’m sick,” Bucky gasped, his eyes shuttered, squirming like it turned him on to say it.
Gale’s ears were ringing violently, his mouth too wet, his lips too dry. He licked them once, again. Sensations going off in his body that he didn’t know how to describe.
Bucky’s own mouth was slick and red and his breathing shook as he pleaded “Help me, Buck.” His voice was thin. So thin, the moonlight could pass through it.
Heavy as if moving through water, slower still, Gale reached out a single hand to brush against—he didn’t know what. His body moved and his fingers touched John’s breast pocket, diagonal from him. When Bucky reached out to touch, something jolted within him. He grabbed the fabric in his fist and yanked his arm to the side, flipping Bucky and pinning his front to the tree. Bucky grunted as it knocked the breath from him.
“Stay there,” he hissed. “Don’t you move.” Both his hands found the small of Bucky’s back and wrapped around his hipbones, clamping down against the layers of fat and muscle there, thumbs seeking out the little dimples he knew were at the bottom of his spine, finally allowed to touch. He pressed his nose to Bucky’s nape to take in the deep scent of his sweat, his pomade, the sting of his cologne.
Bucky squirmed against his grip, and as he pressed his solid ass against Gale—dimly, Gale realized he was hard. He shoved Bucky away from him.
“Please, Buck,” he begged. Bucky had his forehead pressed against the tree, his eyes closed as if he was in prayer. His voice was thick. “Please.”
Gale didn’t know if Bucky could still be saved from the sucking, black hole inside of him. Didn’t know if he could stop himself from trying anyway.
“Why don’t you be my daddy, Gale,” John writhed under him, arching his back, forcing Gale to rut against his ass. “Why don’t you show me how to be good.”
Like a man possessed, Gale scrabbled blindly at Bucky’s belt. He bit into the meat of Bucky’s shoulder as he tore it open and fumbled at his trousers, hearing the zipper squeal as he ripped it down at an angle before grabbing ahold of both Bucky’s briefs and pants and yanking them with some effort down over his ass.
Gale’d seen him naked before, in the showers, but never this close. Any hair was sparse and thin against his porcelain pale skin, and he could see little freckles. Gale grabbed his ass in both hands and squeezed. It was soft, malleable. Bucky groaned in front of him.
Gale fumbled at his own pants next, shucking them off to free his trapped and already aching cock. He spat in his hand and slicked up his length.
“What’re you gonna do to me,” Bucky slurred, his cheek pressed against the tree. Gale grabbed him by the chin, forcing his head back. Bucky cried out.
“You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Nobody ever teach you manners?” Gale rasped in his ear. He raked his cock against the cleft of Bucky’s ass, the spit offering just enough slip to keep their skin from catching, but just barely.
“No.” Bucky shook his head. “‘S why I need you, Buck.”
Gale smacked his ass with all the viciousness he could summon, all his anger at Bucky’s misbehavior. “You don’t call your daddy by his first name.” It felt good.
Bucky grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes closed. “Fuck, I—”
“Language.” Gale smacked him again, hard. His pale, freckled skin was starting to flush pink.
“’m sorry.” Bucky hiccuped. “Whaddya want me to call you?”
Gale didn’t have an answer. When he was little, he called his father “Pa.” When he got older, he just started calling him by his first name. It didn’t feel impersonal, really. The people closest called him by his first name. His wife, his brothers, his gambling buddies, his bookies he owed money to. Felt like a rite of passage, in a way. A little token you got once you passed a certain threshold of disappointment.
“What’d you call yours?” he asked, and spat in his hand, slicked himself up, thrusting himself between Bucky’s ass cheeks again, catching against the furl of his hole.
“What does it matter,” Bucky mumbled. It was almost too quiet to hear. Gale hated this—hated to find these closed doors within Bucky. Gale had no idea what to do with them but sit outside on their stoops and wait in hopes they’d open. It wasn’t right.
Gale just grunted, spitting onto his fingers again. He pried Bucky’s ass cheeks apart with one hand as he wedged his first finger inside of him. Bucky bit into his fist to muffle a wail.
“Shuddup,” he hissed. “You be quiet.”
Bucky obeyed, breathing hard as Gale opened him up, slipping another finger inside after he contributed another glob of spit to move things along. Bucky still had his knuckles in his mouth, drooling over them.
“Pitch in.” Gale held his cupped hand beneath Bucky’s chin and he spat obediently. “Good boy.” Bucky pressed his mouth to his fist and groaned, low and deep, rumbling through his own body and Gale’s like an earthquake tremor.
“I can be good,” Bucky gasped. “Just tell me how, please, Dad—” Gale jolted, startled like a horse, and shoved his fingers deeper. Bucky trailed off into what sounded like a hiss of pain until he rolled his hips back onto Gale’s fingers. “Harder,” he demanded.
Gale slapped his ass again without knowing why, maybe just to watch Bucky’s skin grow pink in the shape of his palm. “Don’t you talk back to me,” he hissed, sticking a third finger inside, pulling him open. He aimed and spat directly at Bucky’s hole, his sticky saliva glistening obscenely as it dripped down onto his entrance. “You take what your daddy gives you,” he said. “And you say thank you.”
“Thank you,” Bucky choked. “Thank you, thank you.”
Gale felt dizzy and hot, all the blood his body could spare swirling around in his head, making it throb like his heart lived in his brain stem. “Thank you who,” he rasped, scissoring his three fingers in and out of Bucky, curling them and watching his knees shiver.
“Thank you, Dad.”
Gale let his head thump down between Bucky’s shoulder blades as he pulled his fingers out slow. He spat once more into his palm. It was thick and gummy, but it’d have to do. He slicked himself up again using his thumbs to hold Bucky open, slowly began pressing back inside.
He was tighter than tight, hotter than hell. Gale couldn’t tell if the burn was from the friction of skin against spit against skin, or if Bucky ran hotter than a fever. His muscles clenched and pulsed as Gale’s head slipped in. He pushed more, cramming himself halfway in before giving up to rock in and out, back and forth. He tried to pull out, but the drag and resistance was too intense.
“Stop, you’ll tear me open,” Bucky gasped, even as he thrust himself back onto Gale’s cock. “I got—” he fumbled at his jacket pockets for something, and Gale stilled his movement, near stuck inside the tight clutch of him. “Here’s lube.” He waved a little packet over his shoulder at Gale.
He recognized it instantly as the lubricant that the docs passed out with the prophylactic kits, he knew Bucky’s habit of catting around with local girls, but a dark wave of possessiveness that he’d kept at bay for so long—even when Bucky came back late smelling like whiskey and perfume and sweat and the hot, sour stench of a woman—finally reared up within him.
“Where’d you get these, huh?” He hissed in Bucky’s ear, gripping the thick base of his throat.
“The docs,” Bucky started, but Gale squeezed tight against his neck and he moaned. “I’m sorry, Dad,” He rolled his hips, clenching even tighter around Gale. “I’ve been sleepin’ around, I’ve been bad, I’m so sorry.”
“You better be.” Gale released Bucky’s throat from his grip, snatching up the little foil packet and tearing it open, squeezing it along his length to ease his slip from Bucky’s hot, dry hole. “No son of mine,” he said, while he slicked himself up, feeling his cock pulse in his hand. “No son of mine’ll…” He trailed off, jealousy and arousal clouding his words, and thrust himself back inside.
Bucky was just as tight around him, but with the lubricant, Gale could press even deeper inside of him. Both of them breathed slow, labored, out of sync as Gale slid further, further inside of Bucky until there was no left of him to cram in. Bucky gripped the trunk like he’d collapse without it. Gale ran a quick, soothing hand up and down one of his shaking thighs.
“That’s it,” he said, feeling suddenly gentle. “Good job.”
Under him, Bucky let out a shaky hiccup. He swayed woozily, eyes fluttering.
“You been drinking?” Gale asked as he pulled back, his voice low. Bucky turned his head to look at him sidelong for a second before realizing.
“No,” he replied lamely.
“No who?” Gale gave him a good, hard smack before slowly sliding back inside.
“No, Sir. Dad.” He groaned as Gale bottomed out.
“What’s that, then?” Bucky’s gaze followed his finger to where his flask lay on the ground, catching the low light in the underbrush.
“I dunno,” he answered.
Gale rocked back and forth, savoring the tight clench and smooth slide. “Don’t you lie to your daddy,” he warned.
Bucky whined. “‘s not mine,” he said.
“I should whoop you raw for drinking,” Gale muttered into Bucky’s ear as he thrusted rough inside him. “Gambling. Startin’ fights. No son of mine’ll go around acting like a dirty fuckin’ rotten drunkard.”
“Do it,” Bucky begged. “Do it. Help me. Please, Buck.” His voice was shattered. “Dad,” he added a second later. “Aren’t you gonna hit me?”
“Bucky—”
“Buck, Buck, Buck. Gale, Gale, Gale. Fuck, shit, fuck. Hit me,” Bucky chanted. “Hit me, hit me, I go out and I sleep around behind your back. I fuck and I gamble and I drink myself to sleep, so hit me, Gale.” He was desperate. “Hit me.”
Gale’d pulled out of him at some point, but he didn’t know when. He just stood there, slicked up and hard with his trousers ‘round his thighs, watching as Bucky’s back shook.
“I don’t know,” he hesitated. He pulled his pinky from his mouth—he’d brought it to his lips and chewed the nail down ragged without realizing, a habit he thought he’d kicked long ago. He balled his hand into a fist by his side, clutching the wool fabric of his clothing like a lifeline. “I don’t—”
Bucky groaned, low in his throat. “Put it back in,” he insisted. “Buck, please.”
His erection hadn’t flagged, but all Gale felt was a bare, wintery emptiness where heat and rage had flared just seconds before. His insides were charred and cold. “Bucky,” he said, reaching for the other man’s shoulder, but trailed off.
“Still hard, aren’t you?” He was. “Put it back in.”
Gale obeyed. He slid back inside of Bucky where he was hot and tight, and began thrusting again. He could feel the sensation building again, but distantly, as if he were looking through a foggy glass. Faster, harder. Bucky had a hand around his own red cock, stripping it fast and hard. Gale felt frightened. It looked like he was trying to rip it off.
His own orgasm was building, building. It hit him dull and slow, time compressed into something thicker as he spilled inside of Bucky where he was tight and hot. He slid out, and watched his semen slide out after from Bucky’s hole. It was red and wet as a wound. Gale felt suddenly, very strongly, that he’d done something horrible and permanent. His semen slithered down the inside of Bucky’s strong, pale thigh, flattening the dark hairs in its path, visible only by the light it reflected.
Bucky was saying something, but Gale couldn’t hear it. Or couldn’t understand it. He wasn’t sure which. “What?” he asked.
“Come to London with me.”
Gale’s blood chilled. “Mm,” he said robotically. “Maybe next time.” He tucked his tender cock back into his pants, fumbling at the zipper, the buttons, his belt. He smoothed his hands over the rough wool of his jacket, his uniform trousers, soothing himself, trying to press out the pockets of sweat trapped between his skin and his clothing.
Bucky thumped his forehead against the tree in frustration. “Just say what you mean,” he groaned. As if it was so easy.
Gale didn’t want to answer. He spoke very quietly. “I’m not going to London with you.”
“Please, come.”
“Bucky,” he said more firmly. “I’m not going.”
“Please.” He’d turned around now to slide his back down the trunk and sat crumpled at the roots. His legs were all akimbo like a doll’s.
Gale stood up straight, looking at a point just past Bucky’s shoulder. A knot upon the beech bark. He couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. Something terrible might happen. He might burst into flames. He might agree to go with him. “You’re gonna go to London tomorrow—”
“Don’t say no again, Buck.” Bucky’s voice was torn. Nearly in two. “I can’t ask forever.”
“You’re gonna go to London tomorrow,” Gale repeated. “And you’ll forget all this. And you’ll come back better.” Bucky was shaking his head no, no no. His face hidden in his hands. “You’ll come back yourself again, John.”
Back to me, Gale thought. Come back to me. He needed his Bucky whole again. He didn’t know what to do with this changed version of him haunting the base. Gale wasn’t mad anymore, he just felt scared. And alone. And small.
He got lost once, on one of his walks, when he was young. He’d sat down and cried, waiting for what felt like hours, the sun creeping its way across the sky as he prayed and prayed to whoever listened for someone to come and find him. It was his father who did. He took Gale tenderly and led him home, washed him and tucked him into bed. That night, Gale understood he had used up his one miracle. He never prayed again. He never got lost again—he knew there would be no finding him.
“Cmon, Bucky,” he said softly, offering him a hand. “Let’s get up.”
“Don’t you touch me, Gale.”
Gale withdrew his hand. But then Bucky looked up, searching Gale’s face for something. Waiting for something. But Gale didn’t know what it was, so he turned his back and left.