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Three hours of filling out requisition forms that should have taken about 45 minutes because Here, have a coffee, Bucky says, then won’t let him alone to drink it. Because Hey, you heard the trouble Curtis got into in town yesterday? Bucky asks, then takes half an hour to tell the story, putting on a real show like he does when he’s trying to capture a room, nevermind the fact that Gale’s the only other person in this particular room and would have listened without all the theatrics. Oh, just one round, Bucky cajoles as he shuffles the cards in the fancy way he has, the one he’s tried and failed to teach Gale how to copy, and he doesn’t even seem sorry about it when Gale takes him for all the meager contents of their pockets they’d been playing for (two spare buttons, a half smoked cigarette, some lint, a scribbled note blurred to illegibility). It’s getting on noon, Gale’s thinking if he doesn’t get this done soon they’re both gonna miss lunch, but when he reaches for the next page of the form he finds it’s been folded into a neat little airplane.
“You’re impossible, John Egan,” he says. He’d like to think he snapped it, managed to get something firm and reproving in his tone of voice, but even he can hear it mostly comes out fond.
And Bucky, he just grins.
—
Impossible, impossible. The bruises from the parachute and the ground it dumped him on have barely faded when Gale looks through a fence and sees his best friend in this whole awful world. He just plain forgets this is a tragedy, that John being here is something to grieve over, because Gale calls out his name and the smile that lights up his face is brighter than the sun and all the rest of the stars and the searchlights on the towers here and the bombs they dropped outta their planes and, just, the brightest thing he’s ever seen. He’s giddy with that light. Heatstroke, sun sick, dizzy when Bucky makes it through processing and they shake each other’s hands and it takes a while for either of them to remember to let go. Things will be worse later, but Gale will have this to dream of: looking up at that bruised face and seeing his own breathless relief and soaring joy resting there and looking back at him.
—
Way he grew up, Gale has a good idea of the difference between things he wants that are only inaccessible through current circumstances and what he really and truly can not have. He could save up, scrounge or steal a candy bar; the thanksgiving feast he ate one time at Margie’s house when they were nine was, he knew, otherwise entirely unobtainable. He gorged himself sick on chicken and warm bread and sugar cream pies, and then had to go lay on the cool back porch trying not to throw it all right up again. This was the last big meal he'd get — in his child mind, ever — and he'd pressed his forehead into the smooth wood and tried not to cry at the fear of wasting it.
They eat moldy vegetables in the Stalag. Canned food that makes them sick more often than not. Cat, rat. Sometimes somebody will start on about the food at the base, waxing poetic about what they all damn well know was stale coffee and powdered eggs. Sometimes it sours the mood, will you shut the hell up, having to hear about imagined delicacies making sitting there hungry that much worse. Sometimes it’s a reprieve, the stories almost vivid enough to hold the taste on your tongue. John sits on his bottom bunk and holds court, room warming with laughter as he tells of the best sandwich he ever had and the frankly implausible series of obstacles he overcame to obtain it. Buck listens from above, grinning up at the ceiling as the man’s wild gesticulation shakes the whole bed. Their first Christmas there — as near as they can figure, without calendars or newspapers — Bucky finds him walking the yard. He stands in a kind of huddled, secret way, broad shoulders hunched in to hide something.
“Close your eyes,” he says, mirth dancing in his own.
“Why?” Gale closes them even as he asks.
“Your present, Buck,” he says, like come on, keep up. “Gotta be a surprise. Hold out your hand.”
“What-” a small weight, warmed from being carried close to Bucky’s body. Sort of soft, with a waxy, pebbled texture. Gale opens his eyes and sees a small lump of orange. It almost hurts his eyes to look at. Everything is so grey here in the washed out dead of winter. Orange- a clementine. A little bruised, not the freshest fruit he’s ever seen but the first he’s seen here in- well, maybe ever.
“Bucky- what- how in the hell?”
John — he’s thinner, Gale worries about it, his face is scruffier, and his eyes are so tired sometimes — grins his movie star grin. “S’a Christmas miracle, Buck, say thank you.”
“Thank you,” he dutifully replies, peeling the rind open with his thumb. No sense in trying to save this for later, it's not going to get any fresher. He rips the small fruit in half and tries to hand part to John, who laughs, breath puffing white in the cold.
“It’s your present, Gale, enjoy it.”
He rips it smaller, offering up just two juicy, stuck together sections. “John,” he says, like please.
Bucky’s smile gets smaller, stranger. He takes the piece carefully, held gently between thumb and index finger. He puts it in his mouth carefully, too, though Gale looks quickly away from the glimpse of teeth, tongue. He eats his own portion of the gift, sweet, tart juice exploding on his withered taste buds, closing his eyes again at the pleasure of it. He looks back up in time to catch John licking stray stickiness from his fingertips.
“I don't have anything for you,” Gale says, apologetic, but John just laughs again.
“Oh, all I need’s the pleasure of your company,” he says, still with that strange smile, a little too earnest for the joke.
That’s the thing- John, Bucky, Major Egan, he saunters in and gives Gale things he never even thought to ask for.
—
John, Gale, Bucky, Buck, Majors Egan and Cleven. Lots of new guys in here, the same old confusion as to which one of them is which. Or- what name belongs to who. Might be the same question. Gale lays awake and listens to the familiar snoring from below and he wonders sometimes if someone called Gale, John might answer. Very late at night, when he's very tired, imagines someone saying Egan, and meaning Buck. Wants- can not have.
—
They stick together. They’re stuck together. That might be the same question too, but Gale’s never put out by it for long, even when John’s being a real ass about every little goddamn thing. He’s just going a little crazy in here, that’s all, that’s okay. So’s Gale. He dreams in clementines, tangerines, persimmons, oranges. They wrestle in the dirt outside in plain sight of everybody, him and John, and that feels like a dream too. Knuckles against the soft give of his cheek. Gale’s tired enough the moment slows down and gets all syrupy, feels almost like a caress. John gets sick in the fall, a frightening cough rattling around in his chest that keeps him down for days, and Gale touches his cheek in the same way, this time checking for fever. John recovers — as much as anyone does here, underfed and freezing and sleep deprived and terrified — and prowls the fence, makes Buck nervous. The fear, the grief he forgot to feel when John strolled into camp is catching up to him, wandering around watching his friend practice at getting dead. There is no fruit, no matter the treasures Buck can scrounge up to trade for it. He doesn’t even know if that would work, if a palm full of something sweet is enough to keep Bucky from walking into a bullet, a dog, a noose.
“What do you want, Bucky,” Gale asks, directly. “What can I get you?” In context, he’s headed over to the boys from the 350th to trade a long hoarded deck of cards for some theoretically fresher rations. What can I get you, meaning cigarettes, alcohol, a button to replace the one torn off right in the middle of Bucky’s coat, or at least a needle and thread to shuffle around the position of a less instrumental one. But the way John looks at him — even thinner, even scruffier, his eyes even more so-tired — makes Buck think he takes something of the larger meaning. He looks a long time. Then, thumbs at his nose and turns out towards the fences.
“You gonna keep me around?” The words kind of fall out of him, he tries to end the sentence on a laugh.
“Bucky-”
“No-”
“‘Course I-”
“Forget it, forget it,” a flippant smile, little finger wave, his eyes don't shine at all.
But Buck won't forget it. “John.” He's got a stupid dream, a house right next door to him and Margie, tree full of orange fruit right in between. This is a- it's a can not, he's aware. But still- “You're gonna be my best man.”
John — a mirror, kind of, not that they are particularly similar people but they can look at each other sometimes, a lot of the time, and see the same kind of feeling reflected back at them — hears what he means. Don't leave me. He rests his knuckles against Gale’s coat sleeve. “Yeah. Yeah, wouldn't miss it.”
When they're made to walk Gale trips over an uneven cobblestone, his shoelaces having mostly rotted sometimes in November and his left shoe all loose. John catches him by the same arm. They smile at each other, funny, polite little things that seem so out of place Gale almost laughs. John sees it, snorts for him. The thing is when they make a run for it it was always going to be together, always. Maybe that was thing to give him: You run at that fence, John Egan, I'm two steps behind you. Go on, dig both our graves. Retrospect, a frustratingly clear thing. Gale couldn't imagine running without John at his side so when there's shouting, when Bucky pauses, stops, distracts, he can hardly understand it. Over the wall and- alone? That can't be. They go together or not at all. There are gunshots. Some aimed at him, he can feel the gut clenching rush of hot air of a near miss. But some-
His companions that did make it out of the town politely slow down for him when, eventually, he stumbles over and vomits. They must assume exhaustion, over exertion, and Gale can't correct them that it's those gunshots still ringing in his ears and his missing shadow, best man, namesake. He can't wail out I said I was gonna keep him. Can not. Really and truly. Nothing, nothing at all he can fucking do about it.
—
He watched his Ma work on a quilt once. A pretty pattern of interlocking circles. He couldn’t wrap his little head around the way she sewed the curves. Two arced edges of fabric, front to front and facing what seemed to him to be the wrong directions, pulled by her clever fingers into an impossible straight line as she ran it through the machine borrowed from their neighbor. Then she’d iron the pieces and — miracle — the circle would emerge.
Gale Cleven flies back towards Thorpe Abbots after dropping oranges out of a war plane and over the radio he — miracle — hears a familiar voice. When he lands he goes for a handshake and instead Bucky grabs him, more or less a hug. He’s shaking, bony, laughing loud in Gale’s ear. Gale figures he’s not doing much better.
They find a field. Funny, how you miss grass, weeds. More than a year, the only green he saw was faded army uniforms. There’s celebrations all over base, and further out, into town. It all seems distant here. They sit close. Their knees touch, Gale's left and John’s right. John's leaned back in the grass, on his elbows.
“Headed home soon,” he says, mildly. He's staring off at the trees. “Looking forward to seeing the soon to be Mrs. Margie Cleven?”
“What if-”
Gale pauses long enough that John eventually has to look up at him. His mouth a still mild line, his eyes burning. The thing is- Gale did eat a meal that big again, after that Thanksgiving. He fell from the sky and then John walked through the gates after him. He heard the gunshots, lived for days tight and stiff and painful with grief, and here he is again, his bony knee so lovely a pressure. Maybe Gale isn't so good after all at knowing what he can and can not have. Maybe John is just particularly good at giving things to him.
“I was thinking,” he says, and John's eyebrows go up along with the tremble in the words. “I was thinking maybe- maybe I don't go back to Wyoming.”
John's leg had been moving a little, Buck only notices now with its stillness. “Where else would you go?”
Gale has to swallow to get the words out. “Wherever you want, I guess.” It's still- things really don't work out, sometimes. Ma had to abandon that quilt half finished, she always fretted that she didn't have time to return the sewing machine before they fled, worried the debt collectors had taken it as partial payment. Anything could go wrong, not least of all John just looking at him like he's crazy and saying no, and even if he says yes- “I mean- I mean it won't be easy, you don't have to-”
“Gale Cleven,” John says, sort of like hallelujah. He coughs, maybe it's a laugh. “Buck,” he says, sitting up, and now their thighs touch, hips, Bucky’s big hand warm on his arm. His face is real close. “You impossible man,” John says, handsome and beloved face full of wonder, and Buck startles, laughs. Deep from his belly, almost falling over with it. When John leans forward and kisses him — miracle! — the world and its big opposing curves straightens into a neat little line under his soft lips and the clever tips of his fingers. When he pulls back, and his eyes shine, and his smile shines, and he says “Well, alright then,” the whole thing flattens back out into a perfect circle.