Chapter Text
Bagram is a sprawling concrete island surrounded by white mountains. When Gale walks down the ramp of the plane, they gleam bright as mirrors, all the more blinding for how this is his first time in direct sunlight for over a full day. The flight from Oman had left before dawn, following a brief stopover in Guam where he managed to swing by the PX for gum, batteries, and a Gatorade. Two days ago, he was alone eating tacos in Ocean Beach listening to the chatter of tourists and locals alike, most of them drunk off $3 tallboys. Four years before that, he was pulling into the parking lot of a mall in Casper and heading into the Army recruitment office, its flat rooftop identical to any other rundown building on that side of town.
The roadmap is clear, but he looks back on it and still finds himself wondering how he's ended up here, alone, on the other side of the world.
-
By the time he meets with the on-duty commander and grabs some snacks from the chow hall and gets assigned to a tent, the sun is starting to set again, sucking out any lingering warmth from the valley with no regard for those who might appreciate it. Gale slumps against the wall to ease the weight of his gear and scans around. Even with all the shit they've installed, the military's attempts to finagle Bagram into an inhabitable forward operating base seem puny, Lego-like in comparison to the massive backdrop of sky and landscape. To Gale, the prevailing feeling is that of irrelevance; of the earth being a cold, dead place they were never meant to populate.
"Hey," someone says. "Corporal Cleven?"
"Yeah." Gale eases off the wall, then wipes his hand on his vest before holding it out. "Gale. Nice to meet you."
PFC Biddick is a pint of a man. He carries it well, with a challenging swagger probably born from years of compensating or plenty of schoolyard fights. Possibly both. Either way, it comes off as authentic enough. He moves around the base and prattles on about its inner workings like he grew up there. When Gale asks him how long he's been on site, the answer is two months.
"They had me at Fort Stewart before. That place is a total shitshow. Kinda like here, except there's more rattlesnakes in Georgia. But there's no burn pits," Curt says wistfully. "And they have a Pizza Hut."
Gale pops a piece of gum into his mouth. "Should I ask what the chow is like here?"
"Fuckin' dog chow, mostly. You got your choice of dry meat or wet meat and round-the-clock cereal. Everything a growing boy needs."
"Sounds about right."
"They said the Pizza Hut is coming soon, though." Curt shrugs at Gale's doubtful expression, both well aware that military time turns ten minutes into four hours, four hours into two minutes, and soon into never. "Listen, I gotta cling to hope where I can."
"Can't begrudge a man that," Gale agrees.
They've come up on a Humvee idling by where concrete gives way to a dirt road. A vicious red flare is painting the mountain tops as Curt jumps into the car while Gale gets in on the other side.
"The thought of a hot slice with peppies and sausies keeps me going. Along with a set of rockhard breadsticks," Curt finishes. Gale laughs and the Humvee starts trundling into the dark.
Visibility drops as they drive north for a bit, and then turn due east, heading out to where the rest of Curt's squad has been inserted for observation on a tiny village. Wind whips past the open window, stinging his lips with sand. He rides blind for a while longer before flipping on his night vision goggles to light the world up with green.
Nighttime has well settled by the time the car slows. Behind him, Curt says, "Let’s go," and claps him on the shoulder. Gale hefts his rifle and jumps out easily, parlaying the momentum into a jog. They head out a few hundred yards and begin the crawl out toward the berm. The ground is unyielding and hard and his belly is scratched up before he's halfway there.
Curt taps at his calf. Without a hitch, Gale shifts his direction to go right until the berm and several darker lumps come into view.
"Bucky," Curt greets one of the lumps.
"Hello, lover." The guy turns. Gale can only make out the shape of his helmet and the protruding NVGs sitting over his face. He juts his chin in Gale's direction. "What is that?"
"That's Gale. QRF guy tagging along," Curt says. "Gale, this is Bucky."
"Nice to meet you," says Gale.
Bucky has already turned his attention back to the village. "Is the Army using psyops to distract the enemy now?"
"He means you're handsome," Curt translates.
"No I don’t," Bucky says, still looking out over the ridge. "What I mean is that he's prettier than my last two girlfriends combined."
"Sorry," Curt says to Gale. It's not clear he's apologizing for, since this is the Army and Gale has accordingly heard people say things that would get them smited for a thousand lifetimes, if one believed in that sort of thing.
"It's fine," Gale says. "I get that a lot."
"He's probably been awake for about thirty-six hours, chewing too much Xenadrine. You do that shit yet? Mouth starts running away from your brain," Curt explains further.
Bucky appears to also think this strange. "What's going on with you?"
"Sorry!" Curt insists. "I mean, Jesus, look at him, he's like -- cherubic. Reminds me of one of the nuns at my high school."
"Must've had some hot nuns," Bucky mutters, and Gale stares resolutely ahead.
A spatter of bullets ratatats in the distance. All of them hunch down further and look around, but nothing else follows in the silence for long enough that Curt and Bucky start shooting the shit, jumping back and forth in topic with rapid chatter that makes it obvious that Curt is also likely running on little else but amphetamines and a handful of twenty minute naps. Gale lies there, quiet, peering out into the cluster of lights until they shimmer together into a glowing string.
The rest of the night is uneventful. The next patrol team tags in around 0200 and they pile into a couple Humvees to drive back to base. Bucky has taken the front seat, head ballooned too big and weighed down with gear, bobbling along as they race over the patched up road. From this angle, Gale can see that there's a blue Ranger tab sewn onto his sleeve, identical to the one on Gale's own.
It takes about twenty minutes to arrive. The drivers barely give them enough time for their boots to hit the ground and they're speeding off again. Curt hustles to catch up with the occupants of the first car, calling out, "Hey, wait, Blakely! You owe me a protein bar, you fuck!", and then it's just Bucky and Gale trudging toward the billeting area.
"Thrilling stuff, isn't it?" says Bucky.
They flip up their NVGs in successive clicks and Gale finally gets a better look at Bucky's face -- the sharp slope of his nose, a permanent vertical crease between his brows. He's startlingly good-looking, even as his eyes become highlighted a cyborg sort of red by a tracer arcing through the air beyond the base. His pupils are pinpoint from the uppers.
"That's what I came here for. To set up a black market for protein bars," Gale says.
Bucky grins. "No offense, but you can't even pull that off as a joke. I can't imagine you doing a black market anything."
The appraisal is needling, topped off with an extra flare of annoyance at how this stranger is so on the nose. Closest Gale has gotten to illegal is a computer full of pirated songs and a plain white tee that Marge lifted from Michael's when they were in middle school. He'd only worn it once. Never even touched a bag of weed, let alone known where to buy one.
"First impressions kind of guy, huh," he says neutrally, in a voice that gives nothing away.
"I figure four hours of sitting next to someone while they barely say a word gives me a pretty good idea of what they're all about," Bucky says, knocking his elbow against Gale's. He's a little taller than him, with longer strides. Gale has to walk a tick faster to keep up. "God. Night patrols are boring as hell."
"Boring is good. Are they always like this?"
"As far as I've seen. There was one time Curt strayed a little too far and almost got his leg blown off by an old Soviet mine, so that was exciting."
"Probably looking for protein bars," Gale states.
Bucky's laugh is a pleasant sound, genuine and vibrant. It wrings out a little zip of dopamine in Gale's brain before he can stamp it down. The base is more populated here, groups of men standing around in twos and threes, snippets of conversations heard as they walk by -- arguments about the plotline for The Matrix, top five Pokemon, a whispered chorus of "Higher" by Creed from a duo up on the guard tower, complete with someone singing the guitar part.
"Like I said," Bucky sighs. "Thrilling stuff."
"I'm guessing you were expecting more firefights and decades-old ordinance doesn't count," Gale says.
In his periphery, he watches Bucky as carefully as he can. What he's found is that the majority of men, if and when asked, cite a version of that as their reason for enlisting. I wanted to shoot shit. I wanted to kill some motherfuckers. A few of them mean it, but mostly he's come across guys in their teens, running from no money or a shitty family; chasing something abstract and unnameable with nowhere to go otherwise, only to end up in places like Afghanistan and discussing Pokemon while strapped with enough firepower to vaporize a house.
But Bucky just hefts his rifle. "Circle of trust?"
At Gale's glance, he says, "You've got a trustworthy face, bucko," and taps his own cheek. "I got spooked once. Shot off a bunch of rounds and almost killed a stray dog. That's as far as I've gotten in terms of a firefight. Not so sure I wanna get involved with a real one."
It's unclear if Bucky is expecting a response, and so Gale doesn't offer one. They pass under a lamp glaring thousands of lumens in a tangible curtain. Bucky stares at him for a couple steps before his eyes pucker into a squint. Gale meets his gaze steadily until he can't stand it anymore and takes a stab.
"You forgot my name," he guesses, and Bucky relaxes.
"You got me."
"It's Gale."
"Gale. From Vail? Gale from Whitetail. Gale from Ferndale. Gale from…"
"Wyoming."
"Gale from Wyoming," Bucky muses. "Nah. I like bucko better. Bucko from Idaho."
Gale scoffs. "What are you, then? Bucky from Kentucky?"
"John from Wisconsin," he says, dragging out the assonance to make it fit.
"That barely even works."
"Works well enough."
Bucky grins again. Gale can see it working well enough, with that kind of grin. They've reached the tents and Bucky stops by the second one, where the flap is hanging open. Inside, Gale can see men huddled around a laptop, playing cards, lying on their racks and reading magazines.
"This is me," says Bucky.
"It's been a pleasure," Gale says, holding out his hand, and Bucky shakes it.
"You're a funny guy," he tells him.
After a single pat to Gale’s shoulder, Bucky slips into the tent with a loud," I'm back, dickheads," and a chorus of booing resounds as Gale turns to walk further down the line. His own tent is across the way. No one greets him upon entering, except for Hambone, who flicks his eyes up from a letter and nods once.
Gale nods back. His gear gets stowed away into a corner and he climbs into bed. Goes through his nightly routine of relaxing -- toes, feet, calves, thighs. Sleep takes him before he gets above his hips and he wakes to a river of sunlight slicing through the tent, a frown curled between his eyebrows like he's been holding his dreams at bay.
-
Curt turns out to be correct about the chow. For the rest of the week, the breakfasts aren't so bad. Lunches are stale sandwiches served in between hamburger buns and dinners are dry meat versus wet meat with a side of waterlogged potatoes. Crosby, Demarco, or Blakely will join him on occasion, but mostly Gale sits by himself and washes down every meal with orange juice that's faithful to its name by color alone.
There are rumblings about a small-scale deployment tonight, so he heads back to the tent after eating to just sit with himself for a bit. An abandoned copy of GQ with Jennifer Lopez on the cover is splayed open on the floor by Hambone's rack, its pages flapping sporadically. Gale takes it with him to his cot and discards his boots and socks before lying down. He reads everything with thorough care, including the editor's comments, while ignoring the other men. At some point, Hambone enters and starts making a racket, but Gale only glances over briefly.
He's holding the magazine to his face, thumbing open a cologne ad to try smelling something that isn't burning shit or arid desert air, when Bucky's voice says, "Found you."
Gale twitches the magazine away. Bucky is standing by his feet, hands on his hips, down to a simple t-shirt. Its ribbed collar has been sweat-bleached lighter than the rest of the material. He appears skinnier without his gear, with a sharp chin and a jawline that cuts up toward his ears.
"Hey," Gale says. "What's going on?"
Bucky is giving him that same squinty look. Gale wonders if he forgot his name again. "Just wanted to say sorry if I was being weird the other night. Too hopped up on Xenadrine, you know?"
Gale closes the magazine but keeps it at the ready against his chest. "You did say I was pretty."
"I took the pills like an hour after I said that, so that one was from the heart," Bucky counters. Gale can't tell if he's kidding.
"I appreciate that," he says anyway.
Hambone butts in with, "Goddamn, throw the guy a bone, Cleven." He's digging something out of his teeth, his vest and its contents spread in a semicircle on the ground in front of him as if he's peddling wares. "Show some leg or whatever."
"Yeah, you're killing me, Buck," Bucky says, resparked. "Can I get a little ankle, at least?"
Again, nothing Gale hasn't heard before. He placidly opens the magazine again; holds it up to his face as he lifts up one bare foot and wiggles his big toe back and forth. Bucky's laugh sounds throughout the whole tent.
"Alright, alright, let's keep it decent."
Gale puts his foot back down. Bucky flicks at his toe. "Don't let a scuzzy dirtbag like Hambone pressure you into anything, y'hear?"
"Whoa. I'm just being the best wingman I can," Hambone protests. "You could use the help, Bucky."
"Clearly," Bucky agrees, though his easy posture belies that he feels anything but. He continues standing there, observing Gale with an unreadable expression. Gale is about to open the magazine again as his sole means of escape when someone pokes their head in.
"Corporal Cleven? Brass wants to see you."
"Alright," Gale says, sitting up.
"Look like you're coming with tonight," Bucky says. "Might get hot."
"Fuckin' a," Hambone mutters.
-
They're to be inserted on a peak within the Arma mountains south of Bagram for observation and possible airstrikes. Two squads, each in their own Chinook, leaving at 2130. The journey should take about half an hour. No reason to expect enemy contact. Gale takes that to mean they're leaving at 2330 and that they should well be prepared for enemy contact, and equips himself as such.
After takeoff, everyone takes turns checking and rechecking their weapons. As soon as that compulsion passes, they pat their vests and belts down to assure themselves of their gear. Then there's nothing else to do but sit. Gale keeps his gaze fixed above the guy across from him. When he tries to think of Casper, all that comes to mind are the macrame plant hangers by the door of their home. Three of them, weighed down from pots holding mostly dead vines. He doesn't know if they're still there. They probably are. He should write his mom, maybe ask about that.
The Chinook has slowed when something prickles the back of his neck. Gale sits up straighter. It's hard to hear anything over the rotors, but he can pick out that familiar pattern of noise subconsciously by now. He cranes his head to peek out the window behind him and sees the nav lights swirling around outside, reflecting off snow in that eerie neon. They've almost arrived at the insertion site.
The noise comes again.
"Hey," he begins, standing reflexively, just as the helo banks hard to the right and they all lurch together in the same direction. Over the shift of bodies, he hears Curt yelling, "What the fuck," and it repeats when the helo, out of control now, overcorrects to the other side with a shuddering mechanical groan. There's radio chatter streaming into his ears, none of it intelligible, cut up by static and his own pounding heart.
It happens too quickly to process. Gale is off balance when an RPG hits starboard, blowing a hole through the Chinook's belly in a brilliant ball of orange and heat. He tries to stumble to the side but the floor doesn't exist anymore -- the ramp is gone, ripped off along with his tether, and then he's through the maw, weightless, falling into the dark.
-
It's quiet.
The mangled Chinook had disappeared past the peak and down into the valley like a setting sun, but it'd been a steady descent. Judging by the slow fade of rotors, Gale guesses they made it about a few klicks out before needing to land. The other Chinook had followed, after popping off its grenade launcher and crumbling what seemed like half the mountain face along with whoever had been out there.
Shock prickles through him drop by drop until he could swear he's glowing with it. He lies there for an interminable amount of time, feeling like some tiny, brainless little thing that had been flicked off the helo by an invisible giant, now left to be reclaimed as organic material on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Trying to recall if he ever lost consciousness is like sifting through mud. Possibly on the initial impact, when his head slammed into the ground and splintered his NVGs to pieces. His left hip had taken the brunt of the fall, along with the same elbow, and both are simmering warm despite landing in a snowbank.
There's a storm coming, he thinks vaguely. A few seconds later he realizes that he's hearing himself, and that those heaving breaths are coming from his own mouth, contained into a buzzing roar by his earmuffs.
Nothing is spurring him to move, and so for a long while, he doesn't. The sky overhead is a clear, black velvet with more stars than he's ever seen. He stares up at them. Thinks about how if he swipes at them with his hand, they might scatter away into dust.
Then something grabs a hold of his ankle and Gale starts with an embarrassing noise. He looks down. Sees a face with wide eyes, head hunched low between the shoulders. Someone he knows.
"We need to find some cover. Gale. Hey."
Gale's ankle shakes again. And again, urgently. Like trying to start a dead car. He finally registers the face staring at him.
"Can you hear me? We gotta move," Bucky says with an unfamiliar tone, harsh and choked up at the same time.
Automatically, Gale rolls over and chooses a random direction and starts moving, but Bucky grabs him.
"No. Not that way."
Gale stills and gives him a questioning look. Bucky shakes his head. It takes a moment to realize what he means.
"Curt," he says, and it's quiet again. "Come on. This way."
Gale rolls back over. He follows.
-
They crawl uphill for what feels like a geologic age, a twinge barking up Gale's side with every inch. An echo of an echo of pain, at least while adrenaline and signal-scrambling proteins are muting the worst of it. He goes on doggedly like he's been trained to do, hearing the scrape of another body moving behind him in tandem, dragging themselves across snow and between boulders and dead brush until they reach a high outcropping patched in by a cluster of trees.
They settle. In the shadows, Bucky exists as an outline and a soft glint of eyes.
"You good?" he asks. The sound of his voice is jarring, too compressed in the thin air and the snowscape.
Gale nods, then remembers that he can speak. Feels like anything above his brainstem has taken leave. "Yeah. You?"
"Fuck," Bucky says, which is as good an answer as anything.
They do a quick kit check. Most supplies are intact, as are their weapons. Between them, they also have three flashbangs, water, four grenades, four protein bars, and half a pack of gum. It's enough to get through the night, as long as they don’t encounter anyone else. Gale doesn't let himself think past that. When he peels away a corner of the electric tape on his CSEL, the pinhole light is glowing green.
"I think we're okay. As good as we can be," he says, taping it back up. "They know where we are."
"Great."
Bucky shivers. A full-body one that has Gale sitting up halfway before he knows it. "You alright?"
"Fine," Bucky dismisses. "Probably adrenaline."
Gale wordlessly removes his helmet before reaching over and undoing Bucky's as well. He runs his hands over Bucky's hair, his neck, the columns of his throat, checking for any obvious injuries. Bucky just lies there and lets him.
"No head wounds," Gale confirms out loud.
With perfunctory pats, he moves his way over the rest of Bucky's frame until he gets to his right leg. A stab of dread whittles into his gut.
"Bucky," Gale says, calm. Always calm. "Something's real wet down here. You still got your NVGs?"
"Yeah, sure. Somewhere over there." Bucky waves his hand in the vague direction from where they'd crawled. "Maybe it's just the snow. Right? Don't our brains mix up signals between wet and cold? Or is that wet and hot, I forget. Barely even remember my own damn name, fuck."
As he rambles, Gale keeps patting, more cautiously now, barely dancing his fingertips around like he's trying to press on piano keys without drawing out any noise. He stops when his thumb catches a hard edge; ghosts along that until it ends in a jagged splintery break. Whatever it is is solid and sticking out perpendicularly to the long line of Bucky's leg.
"Maybe I pissed myself," Bucky is saying.
"I think -- it's your leg," Gale says. Bucky looks at him dully. "There's something in there. Might be bone sticking out, or a big piece of shrapnel jammed in, I can't tell."
It's impossible to assess how bad it is. Bucky seems okay in any case, and he'd been able to make it this far. "I gotta tie it off, alright?"
Thankfully Gale's belt is intact. He digs out the CAT and makes quick work of it: encircles the loop above Bucky's knee, twists until Bucky makes an angry noise and thumps at the snow, then tightens it twice more before latching the rod down and ducking out of reach in case Bucky decides to take a swing.
Instead, he groans, "Jesus, you're rough. I usually have to pay people for that."
"Sorry," Gale says, but he breathes out a laugh.
"Remind me to tip you later, if I don't lose the leg."
"You're not gonna lose the leg," Gale says instinctively.
Bucky gives him that dull look again. "I think you're bleeding on me," he says in response. He touches his chest and brings his glove up to his nose to sniff at it.
"What?"
Gale bites at his own glove to yank it off, then brushes at his face. Sure enough his fingers come away tacky. Attempting to trace its origin only smears more of it around with a hand that’s already losing sensation.
"Can you see where it's coming from?" he asks thickly, glove clenched between his teeth.
Bucky grabs him rough by the chin, turns him this way and that. "I can't see shit out here," he says. Tugs him closer and lies down fully so that Gale is hovering above him to catch a stray beam of moonlight. His fingers scratch through the hair by Gale's temple. "You're not a redhead, right?"
Gale spits out the glove. He touches the same spot, nudging in around where Bucky hasn't stopped prodding at him. When he rubs his fingers together, he sees that Bucky was right -- he can't differentiate between cold and wet until he swipes them on snow and sees dark streaks come away.
"Does it hurt?"
Gale sets his jaw and wiggles his glove back on. "No. I can't feel it."
Bucky takes his hand back. Instead of cleaning himself on the snow as well, he wipes it against his vest as warpaint under his collarbone. "I bet you wouldn't tell me even if you did."
"You've got a new addition to your leg. I can't be complaining about a scratch."
"Maybe if you practiced falling out of helicopters more, you'd have known not to hit your head."
Gale breathes out another laugh. He's got QuikClot in his belt too. He rips a packet open and presses it to his head in a rough estimation of the source, then blinks when Bucky reaches out to adjust the placement with a little shove.
"Thanks," he says.
"Hurry up and wait now," Bucky says faintly.
They wait.
-
"Don't fall asleep," Gale instructs.
"Are you serious? I feel like I snorted an entire bottle of Xenadrine." Bucky wiggles his upper body to take some of the pressure off his arm. "No need to worry on that front."
-
Back at lower altitude, the wreckage is an out of place curl of metal resembling one of those art installations that Gale never gets but has studied anyway, for gen ed classes and also on his own, as if staring at enough of them would suddenly unlock a deeper understanding of himself. Curt's in there, amongst the twisted pieces. Bucky keeps glancing down at it with quick jerks, like he's hearing something. Gale doesn't want to look.
"Hey," he says without knowing what comes next. At least Bucky gives him his attention. Gale's not a big talker, but talking is the only thing that might pull Bucky's mind away from that heap, and so he says, "You got someone back home?"
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. Unless I'm already hallucinating."
Bucky shakes his head. "Nah. No one to write home to except for schoolkids for their little penpal programs. You?"
"I do. Her name's Marge."
"Marge," Bucky says, drawn out, test-driving the name. "I bet she's a good one."
Gale asks, "You can tell that by a name?", even though she is a good one, and Bucky gives him a funny look.
"Just something people say, man. They don't teach you social manners in QRF training?"
"Sorry," Gale mutters. He plays it back in his head. Out of anyone else's mouth, in a different context, it could've come off as banter, or even flirting. From Gale's own, it had sounded like he was challenging Bucky to convince him of the fact.
He doesn't realize he's poking at his wound again until Bucky grabs his wrist and orders him to stop. "And put your fucking helmet back on," he adds.
Gale obeys. The inside of it is like ice and weighs about a million pounds. He clenches his teeth to bite down on the shiver that wracks through him but it strings his whole body tight, wasting energy that they can't spare.
"Tell me more," Bucky says.
"About what?"
"Jesus Christ, Gale. About Marge. Are you in shock?"
"I don't have to tell you anything about anything," Gale says, though he’s the one who brought it up in the first place.
Bucky huffs. "You're doing a pretty bad job of distracting me, I gotta say."
Gale just grunts, irritated at not realizing he was being that transparent. Dimly considers if he has a concussion or is otherwise going insane with anxiety. He's been hunched over his rifle but decides to keep it at the ready by his side in favor of hugging himself in an attempt to regulate his body temperature. The silence stretches around them bleakly.
Out of nowhere, Bucky says, "So Curt's dead," flat and too loud, as if verbal acknowledgement will somehow erase the horror of it.
"Yeah," is all Gale says.
"It's fucked up, that he's dead."
"This whole thing is fucked up."
It's Bucky's turn to grunt. He buries his fingers into the snow, then pulls them out to vacantly observe the pits left behind. Without looking up, he offers, "Circle of trust?"
"Circle of trust," Gale echoes.
Bucky lies back and talks at the sky. "Remember that stray dog I told you about?"
"Yeah."
"If I'd actually blown its head off, it would've fucking destroyed me. Just ripped me up inside, you know? But then I thought about, what if I'd accidentally killed a person instead? And I didn't feel one way or another about it. I didn't feel shit."
He pauses. "What do you think about that?"
"I don't," Gale says. "I don't think anything about it."
Bucky makes an assenting noise. "That's my problem, I guess. Can't think about that stuff," he concludes. Apparently that doesn't mean anything, because then he says, "You ever seen a dead guy before?"
Gale rests his helmet on the snow. Digs it in a little to get his neck to a more comfortable angle. "Not as a soldier. My dad, though. He's dead."
"Shit," Bucky says. "Sorry to hear that, bucko."
Another social manners thing, offering condolences like that. Gale almost laughs at how it's couched in front of the stupid nickname he's evidently stuck with. Bucko. Bucko from Idaho. Gale from Wyoming. Though he'd almost been Gale from Oregon for a hot minute back in his junior year of high school. Would have been, if his father had gotten his way. Yellowed with liver failure and on home O2 from COPD, grumbling about not gonna let this get me and going out on my own damn terms. He'd fixated on the idea to the point of Gale believing him for the umpteenth time in his life. In the end, he always believed him about everything. Then Gale had eventually taken him to the hospital after he stayed up half the night trying to pack their shit up into the bathtub of all places.
"He keeps saying he wants to move," Gale told the sleepy-eyed ER doctor. "Move to Oregon, I mean, because of that assisted suicide thing. I thought he was serious but then he started acting weird and put a toaster oven into the tub tonight. Said he was packing his bags."
"Death with Dignity. You have to be an Oregon resident for that," the doctor corrected absently before switching tack as he flipped the chart closed. "His ammonia levels are high, so it's likely hepatic encephalopathy. Makes him confused and disoriented. We'll give him something to bring those levels down."
"So he doesn't mean what he's saying?"
"That I don't know. The hospitalist is on the way to take a look and do a more thorough exam for admission. You said your mom's at work?"
"Overnight shift. She'll be here in about an hour. Is he gonna be okay?" Gale asked. He'd never asked that question explicitly, afraid of sounding childish; afraid of hearing the answer either way.
"We'll know more after the labs come back," the doctor said.
The labs did come back, and Gale's mom did show up, but his dad never got better after that. He was discharged after twenty days, even yellower than he'd went in and with a new bruise on his side that refused to heal. The hospice nurse made visits over the next month to their home, where he died in a hospital bed shoved into the corner of their living room on a cool spring morning.
Gale had thought he was ready for it, but you were never really ready for a thing like that to actually happen. Until then, he had mostly heard that sentiment in the context of having children -- we thought we were ready, followed by a tired laugh. Privately, Gale thinks they're one and the same. That entering and exiting the world both cause a strange cosmic ripple no matter what, which you only truly experience after the moment itself comes and goes.
"It's okay," Gale says belatedly. "He was on a lot of morphine."
Bucky shakes his head. "Still a terrible thing to go through that early. You must've been young."
The gauze is soaked through. A slow trickle of blood inches toward his eye and Gale lets it run until the tickling on his skin becomes unbearable. He wipes it away then. Cleans his glove on the snow again and studies the smears. It's funny, he thinks; chances are he has a fractured hip and they're slowly freezing to death while awaiting an ambush, but it was the tickling that he couldn't stand.
"I think I'd feel worse about the dog, too," he says.
A long silence passes. Contemplative more so than uncomfortable, though Gale might just be projecting. Beside him, Bucky shifts.
"Honestly, Buck? That does make me feel better about myself."
"Shut up," Gale says.
This time they both laugh in breathy hiccups. Likely Gale has made a fool of himself, but Bucky seems at baseline, giving him a crinkly smile.
"I'm in shock. I don't know what I'm saying," Gale declares. "Let's not pretend you know anything about me."
Bucky dips his head, softly knocking their helmets together. "Sure, not yet. But I'm getting there. And I'll get even further once we get med-evac'ed the fuck out of here."
Gale laughs again. "Okay."
"Non-believer," Bucky accuses.
He hasn't moved his head back. Instead he digs in there as well, helmets touching lip to lip, then angles his gaze to the wreckage again. For a long while, Gale watches him, the way his eyelids droop, how his mouth opens with a misty curl. The moment has come and gone for Bucky and there's nothing either of them can do to stop it.
Finally, in a soft voice, Bucky says. "I'll see you later, buddy," before twitching his face back up and closing his eyes, and Gale closes his, too.
-
"Wake up," Bucky says sharply, after Gale's head nods off to the side.
"Yeah. I'm awake," Gale croaks. "I'm awake."
-
The temperature drops further.
"How you doin' over there?" Gale asks, even though they're close enough now for him to stupidly worry about whatever his breath might be doing, but Bucky's lashes just flutter as if to appreciate the transient warmth.
When there’s no answer, he asks again. "Bucky?"
"I can't feel my leg," Bucky sighs. The moon is passing over the other side and washes him into a ghostly pearl. "Can't feel much of anything and I think my balls will never come back down, but. I can't feel the leg the most."
"It's probably the cold," Gale reasons.
Baseless optimism has no place in missions, nor has Gale ever subscribed to it in general, but sometimes it's nice to believe everything's not going to hell for a little while longer. Plus, it could be true. Lying on the ground is starting to mimic lying on a bed of needles. He looks around for dead leaves, anything to provide separation from the ground. Ends up grabbing handfuls of brush and shoving them underneath Bucky's torso. It's probably as helpful as a bowl of water in putting out a roaring kitchen fire, but moving feels good, and so he keeps on.
"Ow," Bucky says, though his expression doesn't change from its slack hang.
"Baby."
"Yeah, sweetheart."
"Fuck off," Gale says.
It's the first time he's ever said that to anyone. No better time for it, he supposes. His face is numb, but he suspects he's smiling.
"Ooh, I like hypothermic Gale. Lay it on me," Bucky rasps.
Gale sits up to gather more brush, but stops when he sees the inky black of Bucky's pant leg. The stain has spread onto the snow as well, sopped dark before fading at the edges like a shadow at twilight. His smile disappears. He chews on the inside of his cheek.
"Is it bad?" Bucky asks, eyes still closed, aware enough to interpret Gale's movements by sound alone.
"You know no one ever answers that question honestly."
"I know no one ever says that if it's not bad."
Gale registers that his heart is pounding again. It feels far off, like he's listening to music from down a hallway. They have a few packets of QuikClot remaining but he doesn't know how that'll help. Possibly he could pack it in along the edges. Bucky might make too much noise, though. Nothing else comes to mind. There's cotton in place of his brain. He tries out some math -- 4 times 9, 12 times 13, 17 squared, but that's just rote memorization. 83 divided by 12 jams him up. So does 68 divided by 7.
"The tourniquet's on correctly," Gale thinks out loud. "Maybe we should find something to raise your leg on."
"I swear to god, Buck. Not to sound like an asshole, but if you move that thing even an inch I might just shoot you."
"Stop bleeding out, then," Gale grits.
Bucky laughs humorlessly. It transforms into a real one, and then into something more frantic and heaving.
"Bucky," Gale says. He places his hand over the side of Bucky's neck. "Try to calm down, okay?"
"Sure, yeah." Bucky breaks up the laughter by coughing several times with his lips sealed closed. "Okay. Easy peasy."
Gale is still staring at the blood. He forces a thought to the forefront: that they might die here. Recites it silently over and over as an inuring exercise, though it only bubbles underneath the surface and doesn’t spur any visceral response.
He wonders what his dad saw. What he felt, if anything. The reality of it was less abstract, from what Gale remembers. Kept on the brink for days by way of an opioid-benzo cocktail while the actual passing was preceded by hours of air hunger and a deep rattling from his throat, guttural in timbre and audible from every corner of the house. None of it had been peaceful. Knowing all of that makes the idea of dying on a mountain peak not sound so bad -- except Bucky is here, too, and Gale had always imagined himself expiring in solitude. At the core of it is the fact that he doesn’t want anyone to watch him die. Doesn’t want to watch anyone else die, either. Hard promises to keep in a warzone.
"Must be really bad," Bucky says.
"It’s not."
Gale chews on his lip some more. He wants to ask if Bucky is scared. The question puts him right back to seventeen, at that hospital, afraid of sounding childish. Afraid of hearing the answer either way.
"I think they better get here soon, though," he says.
-
"You sleeping?" Gale asks. "Bucky? You sleeping?"
The answer comes delayed. "No."
-
"I just wanna say."
Gale has been floating somewhere in outer space. Bucky's voice brings him back to the cold and for a moment he’s spiteful about it. He scoots closer, draping himself over Bucky's torso. Rubs his hand over his arm with clumsy swipes.
"You wanna say what?"
"I didn't forget your name. That first night," Bucky says. There's an odd rhythm to his words, pauses where there shouldn't be. He’s not shivering anymore. "Too busy looking at you, is all."
"Cherubic?" Gale says, muzzy.
"Goddamn right."
"Quit hitting on me."
"I'm not. Just telling you the truth." Bucky cracks a smile aimed at nothing in particular. "You wouldn't be the first blond who's ruined my life."
"Half-redhead."
"It’ll wash out, baby," Bucky mumbles. "It’ll wash right on out."
Gale hunkers down on him as much as he can. Drifts off again, this time with Bucky in tow. This wouldn't be so bad. Neither of them are watching each other, and nobody's gasping for breath. It's quiet yet. It wouldn't be bad at all.
-
The first streaks of orange are starting to break when Bucky startles. Grabs his rifle and looks around wildly.
"I hear it," Gale says, hand hovering in the air between them. He orders, "Stay here," and looks over at the lack of response. Bucky is near out of it again, pallor blending in with the snow.
Getting up is a Herculean effort. His limbs seize with pain into a whole body cramp. Neither of them have pissed the entire night. Could be rhabdo, Gale thinks foggily. Could be kidney injury with rhabdo. Could be lots of things.
"You stayin' too?" Bucky murmurs.
"Stay here," Gale repeats, like he’s hitting reset.
This time he manages to crook his knee up. Shifts onto it and immediately falls over onto his injured hip. The adrenaline flood is long gone by now, replaced by a steaming fever of agony, the sensation of his very bones being branded. He lies there panting, letting the heat burn itself down into a simmer before beginning the slow, lopsided crawl away from their post. As he goes, a ray of sun reaches out toward him to light up a path that seems like something out of the fucking Bible. He doesn't know where he's headed. Far as he knows, he could still be lying on top of Bucky and hallucinating the whole damn thing.
Then a new wave of static washes through his ears.
"Delta-zero-four, this is chalk two-one-echo, do you copy, over."
Gale stops. When he peers over his shoulder, Bucky is right where he left him, a beige line blending into the brush, save for the bloom of his leg that's illuminated in red. The sight seems to kick his senses back online, bringing with it a flood of panic that should've occurred hours ago. He ducks his head into the space between his forearms and hyperventilates until his hearing plugs up into an underwater murk.
"I say again, delta-zero-four, this is chalk two-one-echo, do you copy, over."
He's shaking all over. It takes several attempts to dig underneath his weight and get a grip on his radio unit. With a trembling finger, he presses the button.
"Lima charlie," he says, but it comes out as a spasming noise. He tries again. "Lima charlie, this is delta-zero-four. Requesting immediate med-evac. Over."