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Fitting back into life at Thorpe Abbotts is easier than John would have expected. There are still missions to fly, beds to make, whiskey to drink. Girls to fuck.
God, how he’s missed the feel of a woman. It’s a damn pity really, that he didn’t meet a nice girl before he started basic training all those years ago. Hell, if fate ain’t a funny thing.
He’s been back in England for five days, and it feels like both a lifetime and the blink of an eye. He and Buck have started taking their breakfasts together each morning. They don’t acknowledge what he’d said in Germany, and he likes it that way just fine.
Today, his mission is a simple one: six bags of grain, twenty cartons of eggs, four sacks of flour. He suspects they may still be withholding him from anything more strenuous, but he’s gonna make the grocer in the village one happy bastard nonetheless.
Leaning against the jeep, he spots a familiar silhouette step out from the mess hall.
“Oi, Buck, get over here!”
Buck had deigned to come along with him out of his own good will, and John watches as he tilts his head up at the sound, walking easily towards him while fiddling with his scarf. John only barely makes out the raise of his eyebrows above his dark glasses.
“We gotta go before it’s dark,” he continues when Buck’s within better hearing distance. “Can’t expect our poor officers to go without their fried eggs tomorrow, can we?”
Buck smiles, giving his scarf one last pat and tucking his glasses neatly into his breast pocket. “Such a tragedy that’d be,” he replies, and steps around him to climb in the passenger seat.
“You ever think this’d be how we spend the last days of the war?” John asks as they drive along the country road, shouting to be heard over the rush of wind.
Buck shrugs. “War’s not over yet.”
“Will be soon enough, though. Don’t ya think?”
He looks across to him, not really expecting an answer, and stops short. Buck has pulled his scarf up over his head like a hood, in the same way he used to before, then, and John knows it’s only because of the wind, but he still finds himself having to look back to the road. Phantoms of desire, fatigue and anguish flare up within him, and he doesn’t speak again in favour of focusing on his hands on the wheel for the remainder of the drive.
The village of Thorpe Abbotts when they reach it is quaint and tiny, and John’s never seen more of it than what’s inside the four walls of the pub, or thereabouts. He dusts his hands and steps out of the jeep.
“Coming?” he shoots over his shoulder, and heads towards the small grocer without waiting for a reply.
The two of them wander aimlessly from store-front to store-front as they wait for the clerk to collect the base’s order. Every now and then Buck will stop and lean forward, nose nearly against the glass as he scrutinises the scones and pastries lying inside. John watches him do so with pursed lips.
“You gonna buy something sweet for Marge, Buck?”
Buck only hums quietly, not giving him an answer. John sighs and turns away. He runs a hand across his neck and leaves him to it, wishing a beautiful girl would sway her hips towards him down this little road and free him from this pathetic bloody troth he’s found himself in. It was all dandy fine when death was his next port of call, but then he’d gone and lived. John thinks he really may have looked the gift horse in the mouth with that one.
But alas, as no beautiful woman makes her appearance John busies himself with helping the clerk load their order into the jeep instead. The sky has turned a light shade of pink after the rain they’d had in the afternoon, and in the dusk there’s the chirping of crickets in the trees.
He throws an arm over Buck’s shoulders as Buck signs his name for the clerk, who nods and bids them farewell. “Gale Cleven, pilot and businessman,” he says. “What else are you gonna get up to, huh? When are you gonna join the rest of us in our lives of debauchery?”
Buck scoffs and dips out from under his arm, smiling as their eyes meet. “Something you wanna tell me, Major?” he jokes, and John grins.
“Oh, never,” he says, and Buck laughs.
“A right old Cary Grant, aren’t you.”
“Of course.”
They look at each other for a moment. Buck’s hair appears a near pale pink in the dying light, and his eyes are the blue of a cold winter lake as he watches him, the grin on his face settling into a small smile.
“Come on,” Buck says, quiet. “Those eggs ain’t gonna be any use out here.”
John blinks, nods once, and breathes out through his nose. Goddammit. Goddammit all to hell. He’s gonna be stuck on this son of a bitch for all the rest of the years God’s willing to give him.
“Sure,” he replies, and climbs back in the jeep.
The sunset fades into moonlight, and they turn the radio on halfway through the drive back, though neither pays much attention to it. Buck’s saying something about weather patterns and rainfall when he suddenly falls silent and lifts his hand to the dial.
“Did you hear that?” he asks, and John shakes his head.
“What was it?”
“I can’t make it out over the engine, will you..?”
He waves a hand in a gesture for John to pull over. He does so down the next dirt road they come across, parking the jeep beside the dark forest and looking to Buck as soon as the engine’s off. Buck stares back at him as they both strain to hear the words floating out from the tinny speaker, expression calm but eyes alert as ever.
“–designated head of the German state, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe–”
John catches a movement out of the corner of his eye and looks down even as his heart pounds in his chest. Perhaps unknowingly, Buck has taken ahold of John’s jacket sleeve, his fingers resting just shy of his forearm. John looks back up to meet his eyes again, and then they turn to stare at the radio in tandem, neither daring to speak lest they miss it.
"–hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, Tuesday, the 8th of May, but in the interests of saving lives the ceasefire began yesterday…”
John can’t help the incredulous laugh that falls out of him. “It’s actually bloody ov–”
“Shh!”
Buck’s grip tightens in his jacket and John lifts his other hand in apology. He barely listens to the rest of the broadcast, even as Buck doesn’t dare tear his eyes away.
It’s over. The bloody war is finally over. John feels lightheaded.
As soon as the announcement finishes he grabs the side of Buck’s head and plants a smack of a kiss right to his temple, his own feelings be damned. Buck starts, but then laughs in surprise and John falls back against the seat, arms spread as if he just biked twenty miles.
“Hell, Buck, I know what I was sayin’ earlier ‘bout the war being nearly done and all, but I didn’t actually think they’d go and do it… Bloody bastards.”
“Only in Europe,” Buck replies, ever the pragmatist, but John can hear the elation in his voice. He can hear something else in it too, though what it is is lost to him.
He bends his neck to look up at the stars and feels Buck do the same beside him. The moon is bright as a bulb, but they’re still visible here and there. Turning his head to look at Buck, his lips lift in a smile almost of their own accord. Here they are, Buck and Bucky, getting out after all.
They sit silently for a few moments. John watches Buck. Buck watches the sky. It’s a level of content he’s never felt before in his life. He almost mourns it when he breaks the silence with a sigh, returning his gaze to the dull green of the jeep’s dash. He goes to start the engine but Buck puts a hand on his arm.
“Hang on.”
His hand jerks upwards to rest at John’s elbow, then his bicep. John furrows his brow in confusion as he looks down at it.
“What? You wanna drive or something?”
Buck’s face is impressively blank, and if it weren’t for the small twitch by his jaw John might think he was completely unperturbed. He opens his mouth again but then freezes when Buck’s hand jumps from his bicep to his face, and suddenly, Buck pulls him forward and kisses him hard on the mouth.
John jerks backwards immediately, breaking the kiss. The back of his hand comes up to press at his lips as he looks at him in shock.
Buck isn’t looking back at him. He’s staring forward into the darkness, sitting still as stone in the passenger seat. There’s a colour to his face that John’s never seen before, even in the moonlight.
“Sorry,” Buck says, voice so low it’s nigh inaudible. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
Abruptly, foolishly, John can’t help but think how he’d been lit by moonlight the last time something like this had come up between them, too. He lowers his hand from his mouth.
“I don’t… You’re…” He stops. “Oh, goddammit,” he breathes, and reaches out to grab Buck’s chin and turn him back towards him.
The look in Buck’s eyes is one of equal trepidation and uncertainty, so John promptly lifts his hands to either side of Buck’s face, leans over the steering wheel and fits their mouths together.
Buck makes a small grunt of surprise in the back of his throat, still sitting stiff in John’s hold. Then he raises his own hand to the side of John’s neck, and in the space of a second their terse press of lips becomes something very different.
John’s near on worried he may be losing his mind. There is no possible reality where this could be happening. And yet here he is, and here Buck is, chest to chest and nose to cheek, and they’re kissing each other as if their act of doing so is going to bring the end to this war for once and for all.
He buries his hand in Buck’s hair as Buck shifts to press them closer together, wrapping his arm around John’s shoulders so his neck is cradled in the crook of his elbow. Their kiss, at first only eager, is now fervent, intense. They grab at every part of the other they can reach, hands roaming from waist to shoulder to cheek. If John could think anything at all that wasn’t just Buck, he might be worried about someone driving by and seeing them.
Each time their lips part, even for only a fraction of a second, one of them pushes forward again to bridge the gap as if to not do so would be physically painful. They have the enthusiasm of teenagers who have just discovered what mouths can do to one another, frantic, wanting. It only slows when John returns both of his hands to Buck’s cheeks and holds him there, breaking from their kiss.
“John…” Buck breathes, voice low and rough. His eyes are wide under the light of the moon.
He lets his hand fall from Buck’s jaw to his chest, and closes his eyes when even through the stiff leather of Buck’s jacket, he can feel the rabbit-quick pace of his heart. In John’s short life he’s been shot at, he’s been beaten half to death, he’s fallen out of a goddamn plane, but he’s never felt more of a rush than he does right now. Hell itself could burst open beneath his feet and he wouldn't even notice.
They sit with their hands on each other’s bodies in the dark, their foreheads bent together. The sound of their harsh breathing mingles with the crickets in the night air, and John leans forward to press his face to the side of Buck’s neck, just to rest there a moment. When his breathing returns to a respectable pace he clears his throat and pulls away, sitting back on his side of the jeep. He adjusts his jacket and flattens down his hair as Buck does the same in his peripheral. A bug lands on his lapel and he swats it away.
“I thought I was goin’ crazy, you know,” Buck says then, quietly. “When I got back here and you weren’t. Worst thing I ever did, leaving you behind that night.”
John shakes his head, turning to look at him. “No. You had to, Buck.”
Buck continues like he didn’t say a word. “Those few weeks… I would dream about you, ‘bout you dying. Getting shot by those guards.” He chuckles ruefully. “I was losing my damn mind, thinkin’ about it. Couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it. Carried that dollar of yours ‘round everywhere like I was your bloody widow.”
For once, John doesn’t know what to say. And yet at the same time there’s a hundred words on the tip of his tongue. He thinks he can still feel Buck’s spit in the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I’m back now,” he settles on. “A situation like that… that we were in… hell, Buck, most people probably woulda done a lot worse.”
Buck shrugs. He doesn't say anything else and so John reaches down to start the engine. This little tryst of theirs has come to an end. They have eggs to deliver, after all.
But he can’t stop his mind tumbling over itself as he drives. Buck sits silently beside him with his hair yet again covered by the thick makeshift hood of his scarf. He doesn’t attempt conversation and John is glad of it.
All he can think of is the very small handful of hours left before they leave Thorpe Abbotts for good. He wants to go home as much as any of the men, but he’d be lying if he said he felt only positives at the idea of it. At the idea of him and Buck going back to where they were before all this, seven hundred miles far from the other. The bare thought almost makes his throat close up. He squares his jaw and tightens his hands on the wheel.
It’s incredible really, how such a small amount of time can change his tune so easily. The before and the after. Before Buck kissed him. After Buck kissed him. This dread at their parting, that’s a part of the after. Before, he’d come to terms with Buck leaving him long ago. He and the idea had become friends, even. But now… well, John would be impressed if he didn’t find himself so damn pathetic.
He’s not the one with the girl back home and he’s definitely not the one getting married, so he doubts any of whatever this is between them can be on his terms. Frankly, he finds it a real bitch of a situation.
He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he only remembers the war is over when they turn onto army property, when he can hear the men’s celebrations before they’ve even made it to the barracks.
Here, the night is filled with cheering and hollering and drunken laughter, and the closer they get to the mess hall the louder and more crowded the road becomes. Men greet them raucously with beer bottles clutched in their hands and girls hanging from their arms. He and Buck turn to look at each other and Buck raises his eyebrows with a tilt of his head. John shrugs and drives straight past the mess hall and out onto the airfield.
“You gotta watch the fireworks, Majors!” someone shouts as they pass. “Gonna be fucking brilliant!”
John laughs and waves an arm in acknowledgement. He turns back to Buck.
“Control tower?” he asks, and Buck nods.
“Control tower.”
He parks the jeep when they reach it and they force the lock, pulling two chairs outside to sit on its balcony. He raids the office for alcohol and finds only one small flask shoved in the corner of a desk drawer. Whichever officer had hidden it away, John surmises that his own need for it is much higher. He’ll replace it tomorrow. Maybe.
The fireworks when they begin are loud enough to deafen his thoughts. When he looks to the side he sees them painting Buck in showers of red and gold.
He makes it five minutes before he physically can’t hold his words in any longer. Taking a swig from the flask, he says, “What are we going to do, Buck.”
It’s less a question than a lament, but Buck sighs and answers anyway.
“I don’t know,” he says. He doesn't bother to feign ignorance. “It’s not… I don’t know.”
John nods, and neither of them speak again.
In the distance he can hear what sounds like singing, albeit very drunken singing, maybe two hundred feet down the airstrip. When the next firework ignites he can just make out that one of the men is dancing some kind of a jig with two female officers, clapping and laughing and all taking turns to spin each other under their arms.
It’s a sweet scene. John takes a long drink from the flask and looks away. Nudging Buck’s hand, he offers it out absentmindedly, and is almost surprised when he actually takes it. It’s the first time he’s seen him drink anything stronger than coffee in all the years he’s known him.
They share it silently, fingers barely brushing as they pass it back and forth. When it’s near empty, John looks across to Buck, sporadically bathed in the glow of a firework.
“What about Marge?” he forces himself to ask, and for the second time, Buck sighs.
“I’m marrying her, Bucky,” he says quietly, and well, if that ain’t the end of it.
John turns back to the sky. There’s nothing either of them can do, in the end. Best just to forget it. He takes the last swig and chucks the flask back inside.