Chapter Text
∞
First thing Gale sees when he opens his eyes is Bucky, sitting on the edge of his own bed in his undershirt and skivvies, too still in the fuzzy gray of morning light. Hungover, maybe, or otherwise in a trance-like state. He's only got one sock on.
Gale squints at him. "You watchin' me sleep?"
Bucky shrugs, as if it's a loaded question. Gale decides to lob him an easier one.
"Where’s your other sock?"
No luck. Bucky just shrugs again, more uncaring than petulant, which makes Gale lean up onto his elbow.
"Hey. Everything okay?"
"Sure," Bucky finally says. "Just thinking, I guess."
If this were Texas or Idaho, Gale would make a mild joke in response. But it's not. It's September, it's 1943. The noise of creaking mattress springs and men gathering their kits starts to fill in the background. On the other end of the room: a bang and a rattle, followed by Jack's voice hissing, "Shit," and Bill saying, "Every morning. Every morning. That bed is in the same place it always is."
"You're gonna lose a toe someday," Gale calls over to Jack, who's hopping around and massaging his foot, before looking back to Bucky, to his close-lipped smile that suddenly cracks into his film star grin, wide and untethered.
∞
First thing Gale sees when he opens his eyes is Bucky sitting on the edge of his own bed in his undershirt and skivvies. He's only got one sock on.
Gale squints at him. "You watchin' me sleep?"
It's a half-hearted joke, but Bucky doesn't respond. Gale wonders if he’s hungover. Decides to lob him an easier question.
"Where’s your other sock?"
Bucky shrugs.
Something on the other end of the room bangs and rattles, followed by Jack's voice hissing, "Shit," and Bill saying, "Every morning. Every morning. That bed is in the same place it always is."
Gale is about to comment on Jack's lack of spatial awareness when, eerily, Bucky turns to poke his chin over his shoulder and calls out, "You're gonna lose a toe someday, Jack."
He turns back to Gale, who’s staring at him without meaning to. “What?”
“Sock,” Gale reminds him after a pause.
"Who knows," Bucky dismisses. "Hey, it's Dye's big day, right? I'll see you at mess. We can head over there together.”
∞
"Alright, alright, I'm going. My brains are all scrambled this morning. I'll meet you at mess?"
Then Bucky's getting up and heading toward the latrines without waiting for an answer, singing out, "Dye's big day!" to the room at large, snapped into his larger than life act with a whiplashing quickness.
In his wake is a room with more empty racks than occupied ones. By now, Gale has trained himself to process only the sharp angles of furniture, the repeating pattern of windows. How one latch on Curt's footlocker is broken and hanging loose. Bucky and Croz had hauled the thing in yesterday per Bucky's insistence -- he asked me to give it a look-see if it ever got sent to his parents. While it waits to be taken away in the afternoon, the rest of them are back in their beds, waking up, about to go on with their day like none of that ever happened.
Operating solely on statements of fact is how Gale's been getting through. This is where they are, this is what happened, and he tries his damndest not to think any further.
Bill shuffles to a stop at the foot of Gale's bed, toothbrush handle sticking out of his mouth. "Buck? You getting up or what?"
"Yeah," says Gale. "I'm up."
∞
First thing Gale sees when he opens his eyes is Bucky's empty rack. The corner closest to him is undone, hanging down in a loose tail.
He sits up. Sticks his feet into his cold slippers. The number of mornings where Bucky has woken up this much earlier than Gale could probably be counted on one hand. More likely is that he has yet to return from wherever he went last night.
They don't have anywhere else to be until Dye's landing. Gale reaches out and pulls the sheet tight before folding it under in a neat crease.
∞
At breakfast, Bucky tucks into his usual fare of eggs with four pieces of bacon and two links, but underneath the table his leg is jogging up and down in a steady gallop. The repetition scratches at Gale until he's about ready to burst out of his own skin.
Jack reaches for the pepper and gives it a stern jab over his plate. "Got some news."
"Good or bad?" Blakely asks warily.
"They found Van Noy's crew," Jack says without fanfare, and the whole table audibly loosens.
"Oh thank Christ," says Croz, as Gale whistles out a steadying exhale and Brady leans over to ask, "Where?"
"Out by Italy somewhere. Germans picked them up."
"Shit," says Blakely. He shakes his head.
Nobody has any more to say after that, so they go back to doggedly hovering over their food like scolded children for the rest of the meal. Bucky has stopped eating in favor of staring through his plate, silent and idling, leg finally stilled.
Van Noy had made it, but in all likelihood, Curt and Dickie are dead. As dead as Smith, and Claytor, and hundreds of other names that run together in Gale's head like a newsreel on fast forward. Not a week ago, Bucky had been the one saying, We're gonna get through this. Don't you stop believin' that. That Bucky would've waved Jack off, said he was mistaken, that Van Noy and his men actually sailed into the sunset toward a tropical island and were probably drinking out of coconuts.
This Bucky is only half there, not quite in his own body, sitting limp like something vital has been torn out of him. Mentally drowned in the Channel along with all the discarded pieces of Gale's fort. Blindly, Gale slides his foot forward until it meets Bucky's shoe, willing him to come back from wherever the hell he's gone to.
∞
The mess hall is filled with the low drone of conversation punctuated by clinking utensils and cooks yelling at each other. All the noise doesn't do much to cover up how the place is barely half full.
"Here's a question for you. Food for thought." At this, Bucky jiggles a forkful of eggs in Gale's direction and smiles at his own dumb joke. "Chicken or egg? Which came first?"
"You're in a pretty corny mood this morning, Major," Gale says.
"What's your definition of 'corny' here?"
"I'd imagine it's the same as Webster's."
Bucky shakes his eggs again. "Oh c'mon. It's more fun if you play along."
"Alright. Whatever machine they use to evaporate those eggs came first," Gale says in between bites.
∞
But Bucky doesn't show up to mess for breakfast, nor is he at quarters as it gets closer and closer to Dye's estimated return. Gale doesn't want to bike over alone and everyone else is at the hardstands already. In the end he hoofs it, arriving just as they're starting to look upward at any phantom noise that might signal good news.
"Any of you seen Bucky anywhere?" Gale asks as he joins up with a cluster of men piled over one of the jeeps. The only answer is a scattered shaking of heads and "No sir, haven't seen him."
∞
A meeting with Bubbles gets cut short when he has to run into the office to take a call from Division, and half the men are already gone in anticipation of Dye's return. Bucky drives them there, mood reverted back into an artificial shine, yammering on about a dog he's seen wandering around town and how he just might bring it back to base to give Meatball a buddy.
They barely pull up in time to see Dye coming in and then it's happening before Gale can revel in it. There's whooping and cheering all around the hardstand, people soundlessly clapping from up behind the tower glass. Someone is halfway climbed into a jeep to honk at the horn with long bleats.
He nudges Bucky. "Son of a bitch made it."
"Whaddya know," Bucky says. He's smiling. The rest of his expression is inscrutable, swallowed up behind his aviators. "Next time we're all here, it'll be to watch you close it out."
"Don't jinx it," Gale warns, even as a tiny seedling of hope curls free with a shiver as he watches Dye do another fly by. It makes him weightless, almost, this idea of a possibility. A foot lifting off his neck. Another foot holds poised beside it, ready to come down with the reminder that some of the boys hadn't even been close to double-digits. They never would be.
Bucky just waves him off. "Jinx won't get you and neither will the krauts," he says, sounding like his usual self.
That's one of the differences between them, Gale supposes. While he tends to look outward, carefully examining all the pieces before cobbling together what he can from what he's got, Bucky looks upward: to the universe, to lucky deuces, to getting by on a winning smile and a it'll be fine, Buck.
∞
They wait around until finally a pinprick in the sky appears, and keep waiting until an unmistakable buzz of engines powers over the din on the ground. Gale's still got half a mind on Bucky's whereabouts, but that gets startled away when he sees the fort careening toward them. Part of him is surprised at Dye's success; not that he hadn't thought it possible, but because the world so rarely turned out to be as straightforward as it was in his imagination.
Dye had made it. Son of a bitch had actually made it.
Celebration erupts. Gale smiles up at the fort, an impossible goal made concrete in the form of SUNNY II. The plane cuts low enough to vibrate their bodies and blow away half their caps in a whip of air through its shredded underbelly.
"Twenty-five," Croz whistles. "Jesus."
"Look at that," Gale says.
Everyone has their necks craned to watch the victory lap. Dye flies even lower the second loop around, passing behind the control tower at an angle that shifts into an optical illusion. For a split second, the fort's dimensions shrink to that of a toy plane, and Gale almost believes that he can reach up and pluck it right out of the sky.
∞
"Is it too late?" says Bucky's voice.
"Nope," Gale says. He lifts an arm to point, though it's already clear: Dye, flying down to them with enough victory flares to burn a red cloud into the atmosphere.
"Well, whaddya know."
"You almost missed it," Gale says. Figures that's as good as a where were you?
"Didn't actually, though," Bucky parries.
He's not watching Dye. Instead he's watching Gale, with a smile as crooked as his cap. His sunglasses reflect Gale back at himself, the same way Gale assumes his are reflecting Bucky back to Bucky, and so on and so on.
"Twenty-five," says Gale.
Bucky knocks Gale's elbow with his own. "Who's counting anyway?"
∞
The club has a manic tinge to it that night. Crops of replacements linger at the edges, soaking in the revelry with wide eyes and drinking everything that's shoved into their hands by those who have already been up. Gale wants to grab them by the shoulders and shake their smiles off. He wants to tell them, it's not like this. It's not like this, not one bit.
"All these new faces," Bucky mutters. "We go down, they won't remember us either. Like we never existed, Buck."
Before he can think about it, Gale says, "What does it matter?"
What he means is, being remembered won't affect the mission any. Won't dictate whether or not they hit their targets. Won't get them back to safety, won't get them home. Whether or not Bucky takes it this way is a gamble that Gale usually avoids making.
"Nothing, I guess." Bucky takes a sip of his drink. “Yeah. None of it matters,” he says again.
The band swings into In The Mood and then Bucky is getting up abruptly, grabbing onto Gale's shoulder. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'm sick of this goddamn song."
∞
"London. Let's go, Buck. Paint the town red." Bucky flicks his cigarette against the ashtray. "Hell, maybe we won't even come back. Think about it."
"Ain't ever known you to be a deserter. Except maybe that girl back in Austin," Gale says, amused. "Ella, was that her name? Poor girl is probably still standing out by the laundromat, waiting for you."
Bucky snaps his fingers. "See, we can go get her! She won't mind, I promise."
There's no despair in his face tonight. No red-rimmed eyes, no sloppiness in the corners of his mouth. He'd even remained mostly silent through Harding's flak-happy speech, letting his shoulder be nudged behind Gale's own like a latched gate. Sometimes he makes it so damn easy to say yes to, when nothing ever feels easy for Gale. Easy is like sinking into mud; easy is like coming up against a ten-foot brick wall.
"It's only been a few years," Gale says. "She can wait a little longer."
∞
Gale flits his gaze around the club. Everywhere but at Bucky.
"You need a break. Think the colonel oughta fix you up with a weekend pass."
"Mm. You should come," Bucky says. The angle of his voice lets Gale know that Bucky's not looking at him either. "London. Let's do it up, Buck. Paint the town red."
The request is all too casual for it to be genuine. Or, maybe it's the other way around. That thing in Gale's chest stirs, makes him want to say yes; yes, okay, make it two passes, you and me, let's go. Ever since they met, he's had an inexplicable urge to indulge Bucky as much as he knows how, which is to say not much at all, and never enough for either of them.
His real answer is already a foregone conclusion. They both know that, even if they pretend not to.
"Yeah," Gale says. "Maybe next time."
∞
"Not this time, Bucky," Gale says. "Write me a postcard, though."
∞
"I can't," says Gale.
∞
“Already?” Bucky says, but shuffles upright and follows Gale through the exit, only to stop as soon as they’re through the doors to light a cigarette. He takes a puff and tilts his head back to exhale in one long breath, letting the cloud of smoke nearly reach the overhanging lamp, then blinks up at it. They stand there in the sort of silence that expands over everything else until they could be the only two people left alive on the entire planet. But the truth is too far from that particular fantasy. In reality they have men to lead and missions to fly, and they need to have their heads on straight to do all that.
Gale keeps his voice even. "Harding's gotta be pretty sore about that whole show back there."
Bucky snorts. "I think I'll live."
There it is again. That bitter tone. "What's going on with you today?" Gale asks, low.
"Don't know what you mean."
"You're pushing. You're pushing and I can't figure why." Bucky makes another derisive noise that catches on Gale's hackles. "It never gets you what you want," he presses.
"Well, maybe that’s what I actually want. Maybe if I push hard enough or far enough, I’ll believe l never wanted anything in the first place."
He pokes the cigarette back into his mouth before pinching it away again to say, "What?" in response to Gale's stare.
Bucky asks that a lot. What?, nestled behind a self-aware smile, or with a challenging jut of his chin, like it's a dare. To Bucky, a singularly correct answer exists and he wants to see if Gale will get it right. Gale usually demurs, sensing an inherent danger tied to that question without quite knowing why.
This time, though, the churning in his gut is too strong to tamp down on. His face flushes, always an uncontrollable precursor to difficult conversations, and he's thankful for the cover of darkness.
"Sometimes you act like nothing matters to you," he finally says, heart pounding all the way into his gums.
∞
"Let's go make the rounds with the replacements first," Gale tries, taking a step toward a cluster of them to his left, but Bucky doesn't let go.
"That's Rosenthal and Nash, copilots Speas and Lewis. Lewis goes by Pappy. Now come on."
Gale lets himself be pulled along, wondering if he lost the thread somewhere. If pieces of himself are being psychically lobotomized without knowing. Bucky had come in late, missing Harding's pep talk, which was likely a good thing seeing as he was already halfway to drunk. He'd stuck by Gale for the rest of the night and Gale can't figure when he would have had space for introductions to the new crews, let alone to learn nicknames. But they're already out of the building before he can begin to craft any questions.
"You're hanging it up early tonight," he comments instead.
"I'm right where I want to be," Bucky says.
He doesn't say anything else, then stops short when they're passing by HQ. Gale stops as well, hand automatically coming up to catch at the back of Bucky's elbow.
"You gonna be sick?" he asks.
All of it rolls out in a single word, a conditioned response from years of Bucky at his side, of deployment and sharing rooms. And before that too, with helping his father up the stairs in the middle of the night. Gale has wondered if it's the same for all drunks -- if they always made it partway to the destination before their equilibrium caught up and rebelled.
"Nah," Bucky says. "Just wanna take a break. Have a sit, get some air."
∞
"Ha," Bucky says humorlessly. "Lots of things matter to me."
"Alright, like what?"
Bucky spreads his arms out. "Oh, I don't know, Buck. Like whatever the hell it is we're doing here. I'm not sure, but I think it's got something to do with a war."
A hard knot forms in Gale's throat. It's not in his nature to goad, but Bucky has been out of reach for the whole day, buoyed away on an unfamiliar current that suddenly seems imperative to fight through.
"Bullshit," he says. "That's bullshit, John. What actually matters to you? Right now, right here. What do you care about?"
"Fine. You want a list? Here's a list. I care about you," Bucky shoots back, enumerating with his fingers. "I care about all the guys in here. I care about winning this fucking war and I care about staying alive for long enough to drag my ass back home. Is that good?"
Everything he's saying falls just short of believable, coming out of that twisted mouth, with that flat voice. Reading from a script, trying to get Gale off his back.
"It's okay to want those things," Gale tries.
Bucky stares at him like he's said something stupid. "I know that. I want things all the time."
Gale pivots again. "And it's okay to care about things."
"I know that too." Then, before Gale can really get to the meat of it, and because self-inflicted wounds are always easier to deal with, Bucky takes the wheel and beats him there. "And it's okay for people to care about me, right? Is that what you're getting at?"
∞
Bucky plops onto the ground in a heavy drop, then crooks one knee up and starts picking at clumps of grass. Gale sits perpendicular to him, legs straight, leaning his weight back onto his wrists.
"Got an important question to ask you," Bucky says. Gale stiffens a little, but Bucky just holds out an open palm, face up.
"Chicken," he states, then lays out his other hand, "or egg? Which came first?"
The tension evaporates, replaced with an odd sense of disappointment. Gale shifts to push Bucky's hands away. "Whatever machine they use to evaporate those eggs came first."
"Gotta be the egg," Bucky insists. "Can't have a chicken without an egg."
"Then where'd the egg come from?" Gale challenges. "There is no right answer. That's the whole point, isn't it?"
Bucky's face flickers. "Mm. Philosophical. The beginning is the end is the beginning and all that." He nods to himself. Keeps nodding as he pulls at more grass, like he doesn't even know he's doing it. "So. Dye's going home, huh?"
"You weren't there to see it," Gale says. Asking, but not.
"Because I wanted you to tell me all about it. Go on. Paint me a picture."
∞
He goes to pat at Bucky's leg where he always does, just above the knee, but Bucky is turning toward him as well -- his limbs fall open and Gale ends up landing high and inside Bucky's thigh instead.
A second ticks by. Two. Three. Both of them stay motionless. Gale looks at his thumb, how it rests against the thick inner seam of Bucky’s trousers. The thumb is attached to what certainly looks like the rest of his own hand. Pale, with knobbly knuckles and tendons like cables under his skin, laid against the dark green fabric with startling contrast. But if it really is his hand, shouldn't he want to move it? To break the contact and apologize?
It's funny, if he thinks about it. Funny how a friendly gesture had always been inches away from morphing into something else entirely.
He glances up, just as Bucky is sliding a cold palm around his neck and pulling him into a kiss.
∞
"Jesus," Gale says, bewildered. "What's gotten into you? How much did you have to drink?"
"It doesn't matter. None of it matters. Don't you see that? I'm already fucking dead."
He gets up in Gale's face, looming -- and laughs. The sound is galling, like he's laughing at Gale and his fumbling attempts to peer behind the curtain. For all of Bucky's effusiveness and joy, the flip-side holds true as well. He reads people within a few seconds and can easily transmute that into a precise kind of coldness designed to needle at someone's soft spots.
"Stop it," Gale orders sharply. "You're not dead. Don't -- say that."
"Yes, sir, Major Cleven, sir."
Bucky flicks him a mocking salute, and that's what makes Gale wrench away from his caging shoulders.
"And don't make me feel like a fool for trying to help your sorry hide," he bites out before leaving with immediacy, heading back to barracks at a pace that Bucky in his current state won't be able to match.
The base is nearly deserted. Gale walks along the path alone, willing himself to sublimate the rage into something else. Something tolerable, something that slots into even-keeled Gale Cleven, problem-solving mediator Gale Cleven; you're better than that Gale fucking Cleven. Most days, and with most other people, it's easy to do, but he reaches the doors and the hot flare of red in his cheeks hasn't left yet.
∞
They walk with slow, meandering steps, hugging opposite edges of the path. Bucky had left behind only a couple empty glasses, though he'd topped off his flask before leaving.
"Dye's going home," Bucky sighs out, almost to himself.
Gale hums, also preoccupied. This walk back was never easy, with Bucky hanging off him half the time and near crowding him off the road for the rest. Now he finds that the space between them is strange in its own way.
He pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. "Do you remember when you said -- you said that if there were only two pilots left up in the air, it'd be me and it'd be you."
Bucky responds to the callback with an agreeable hum.
"Watching Dye come in, it felt like…”
Gale doesn't finish. It hadn't even been a fully formed thought. More like an involuntary jerk of superstition, trying to assign order to things where there was none. On the brink of voicing it out loud, it devolves into an ugly, childish thing that catches in his teeth: it felt like he'd taken up one of those spots.
He squints into the distance. "Never mind."
"Aw, hell, Buck. I meant it, but you also gotta remember that this isn't a zero sum game," says Bucky, as if Gale had actually spoken the words out loud.
Gale huffs out a laugh that materializes into white as they pass under a lamp. He laughs some more at the role reversal -- at Bucky being the reasonable one, balancing them out with a steady hand. Not that Bucky wasn't reasonable. Just that he was willing not to be, in front of Gale.
He seems softer today. Something to be cradled and gentle with.
∞
Bucky squeezes at the base of Gale's skull, a simple two-pronged touch that makes his jaw loosen open. A small noise comes from the back of his throat all too easy, like he'd been keeping it safe there and only Bucky knew how to pry it from him.
Then Bucky pulls away, as quickly as he'd leaned in, leaving Gale to catch himself against the dirt. His other hand, which had been glued to Bucky's thigh, slides off lifelessly as Bucky tents both his legs up in a slow drag and rests his forearms on his knees. His gaze is pinned straight ahead, still calm, still pensive, profile a pale smear in the dark.
"It's alright, Buck. I hate myself for it even more than you do. Can't help it sometimes, though." Bucky laughs hollowly, then gets up, brushing off his trousers. "I promise you'll forget all about this soon. Okay?"
"John," Gale finally says. He bites his bottom lip, scraping the taste of Bucky further into his mouth.
"Forgive me tomorrow?" Bucky calls out, already a few paces away. His posture is straightened, steps no longer stumbling. He turns smartly on his heel and disappears into the gloam.
∞
He’d been embarrassed, Gale realizes. Humiliated through and through. In pressing Bucky about his vulnerabilities, he had revealed his own in tandem: that he has wants, too. They've been unfed and starved, condensed down into a single kernel small enough to keep tucked away on most days, but present all the same. Worst of all, he'd foolishly been conflating this sort of objectivity with control.
Bucky hasn't returned when Gale is tucking into bed. It'll be better tomorrow, he decides. He'll wake up, say good morning, and pretend for a little while more. Bucky might be icy at first, but he can never hold onto it for long.
Gale drifts off to sleep.
∞
The horizon is clear for almost a full minute before Gale can move. His body starts off on its own volition, scrambling to his feet and following the route Bucky must've taken. On either side of him are squat buildings with alleyways leading to dead ends, any of which Bucky could've ducked into, but Gale knows he wouldn't put himself in a place to be boxed in.
He doesn't think about anything. Just keeps moving, hopping the fence and starting off into the overgrowth beyond the base, damp up to his knees within seconds. The noises from the club fade away until all that's audible are his own breaths and the swish of parting grass. He walks over what seems like miles of rolling hills, watching his legs cut in and out of his vision in a hypnotic rhythm. Inertia fuels that internal motor until he looks around again and realizes that it's fully dark now, and that he's made it to the edge of the woods.
He keeps going.
∞
Gale's lips still feel warm to the touch. He blinks up at the ceiling, convinced that sleep will be impossible, and then the next thing he knows, he's opening his eyes to a blue-dark dawn. When he pokes his head over the edge, he sees that Bucky's bunk is empty, blanket corners tucked in with perfection, like no one had slept there at all.
∞
Bucky rounds Gale's bunk on the way to his own. Lays a brief hand on the lump of Gale's foot under the blanket as he passes.
"Good night."
"Night," Gale says back.
∞
The officers' quarters are cold and emptier than they'd been this afternoon, with Curt's trunk having been taken away. Bucky doesn't acknowledge it. They brush their teeth, Bucky ducking sideways to rinse directly from the faucet while Gale uses his cupped hands.
"See you in the morning," Gale says, sliding his legs under the blanket.
Bucky is in bed already, facing the other direction. All that's visible of him is a dark mop of hair on the pillow.
"See you," he echoes.
∞
At first the trees are clustered together, creating layers of branches that he has to duck under or push aside. It clears out once he reaches what appears to be a rough middle point, though Gale wouldn't bet on that. Wouldn't bet on any of this being real, in fact. He's lost, with a head stuffed full of yarn and a buzzing in his ears.
When he looks around again, something catches on his periphery -- a new pulse of light like a soundless heartbeat, or photons drumming in Morse.
He slowly picks his way forward through the clearing.
Here, the forest floor has split into two levels. Higher ground supported by spidering tree roots, while the area underneath is tunneled out to reveal a knotted network of even more roots. He makes a wide arc down to the dip, then stops again as a bright flare makes him blink on instinct. This far in, the moon has enough leeway to shine through unhindered, adding a dream-like sheen over the foliage on the ground, but there's also a soft glow emanating from between those snarls, seemingly offering a glimpse into the molten core of the earth.
"Bucky?" Gale rasps.
He holds his hand out. There's no heat from this inexplicable light. The color reminds him of working in the fields, the gas flares that would burn in torches stretched toward the heavens. He steps closer, shoes reflecting the warm tone; closer still, ducking into the space until it illuminates his fingers, his arm, and then he squeezes his eyes shut against a brilliant wave of red static.