Angelaclev - Calling Out Ur Name

This system has to go.

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angelaclev

8 months ago

|| Radio ||

Requested plot points? ☑️

Circa: early February 1944

Immediate previous fic: Favorite Escape

Summary: when your hodge podge radio won’t work, who should ya call? Probably the flight engineer

Warnings: usual universe warnings apply, 18+ but nothing very alarming really happens in this one, references to others are made, some potential slut shaming in the beginning if ya squint? perhaps some queer baiting but it’s the Buckies rolling around on the flooor, they’re one massive queer bait lbr, it’s not me. Also. My shit Crystal Radio making descriptions- don’t come for me I haven’t made one and I spent five hours falling down a rabbit hole as to how the guys made them in the camps and at the end of the day I said: screw it! And went with one of the Brit’s scenarios 🍻

Edited only by my tired little eyes, full warning and have mercy 💋

Also, just a note I feel compelled to make- this fic centers around women in the army, in a war, which they’re spending under dire conditions in a POW camp. Yes there is love here, there is also hierarchy and discipline and the enforcement of that does not make one character or another necessarily callous or less loving. They are their ranks first and foremost as all signed up for.

“They’re forging papers, you know.” Maureen broached the topic to Egan one day, late February and when her cheeks were still bruised from Ida’s book.

Bucky paused his tracing of a map, sooty finger trailing along a river with the same incomprehensible name as its twin running parallel, he didn’t know anything about papers or anyone making them and she knew that. “Who?”

“Good ones. Identification, passports.” She enumerated.

“Who?”

“The Poles. The ones with the-“

“-the liquor.” he finished for her, remembrance and condemnation heavy in his wry tone. “The ones you stayed out all night with.”

“Stayed long enough for them to get drunk enough to show me.”she replied, without heat, which was surprising.

“Some grand plan of yours, huh?” He bit back a laugh, it was a fine way to cover her ass for being insubordinate. It was a way he’d likely try if he was in her place.

“No.” she swore instead. “Just luck, I happened to see them. They got careless. Maybe an answer to all Jack’s prayers.”

“Yeah. Anything to give that rosary a break.”

“Yeah.”

“You asked them?”

“What for?”

Bucky regarded her with thinning patience but something kept him from snapping, the feeling of a riddle still to be solved. “For some papers.” he clarified, measured and intent, she knew how much easier that would make their plans for Ida.

Maureen shook her head, glancing down at her twisting hands, “I didn’t want to-“ her mouth twisted too, “-I wanted to ask a superior first.”

Bucky considered that for a moment, slightly touched at her newfound wisdom, “Why not ask Buck?”

She shook her head again, auburn hair curling under her chin just so, even here in the stalag she had some traces of the old charm. “He’s got too much to worry about for me to be bringing in hypotheticals.” she was so upset by something she would not even meet John’s eye and he felt a slice of remorse for how he hadn’t even noticed the ground down change in her since she got here, his drinking buddy and the soft fleshed rival of merry old English days was a gruff and battered and sullen woman; being a red blooded American male, he regretted that dismal change. “And I'm worried about what to bargain with. What can I promise? We haven’t got much and I don’t have— there’s not much anyway, but what we’ve got I didn’t wanna promise. Not without-“ she still hadn’t met his eye, he tracked hers; a furious roving of pale blue back and forth across the floorboards and it made Bucky itch.

“Who signs these papers?” Bucky asked, thinking the logistics through, knowing she’d perk up if he brought them up.

“Haven’t a clue. Maybe they haven’t figured that part out yet. I don’t know. I just know they’ve got papers.”

“Good ones.”

“Yeah.”

“We haven’t got much.” he agreed, clicking his teeth in thought, “What’d you give them for the liquor?”

“They just invited me.”

“Didn’t have to lend a hand or nothin’?” he balked and Maureen threw him a glare that seemed more hurt than rage, and chastened by a voice inside that sounded much like his mama’s, he amended with sheepish humor, “Hell, feel like lending a hand myself these days, if it’d get me a whisky.”

Her gnarled fist curled white in her lap, she managed hoarsely, “They just wanted to talk about home. To someone who hadn’t heard about it a million times before.”

“They got cigarettes?” he asked.

“As most common payment for their booze -they’ve got enough to insulate their shack three deep.”

“Cigarettes won’t cut it then.”

“I’ve been thinking.”-

“Yeah?”

“The radio. I’m the only one who doesn’t think it’s worth the risk but, I know, it doesn’t matter, it’s happening. Gale’s going to keep trying. And if it works-“ she rubbed at her eyes, tired and unsure, “-that’s quite the bargaining chip.”

Bucky nodded slowly, eyes narrowing as his smile grew a touch broader, “News of the outside world.” he was half in agreement, “Buck asked for a week. Been four days.”

“He’s stumped.” Maureen retorted instantly. “And he’ll stay that way and he’ll go nuts and you’ll go die going over the fence and then he’ll have no reason left not to die too.”

Bucky whistled, low and chiding, “You’re full of rainbows today, Candy.”

“You know who he oughta ask.” she shook off the barb. “But he won’t. And I don’t want him risking it for this thing anymore than anyone else, but you all want it so bad, and they’ll shoot us for it if it works or not. I’m not asking her. But you would. Might as well get shot for it working, right? Isn't that what you said yesterday? You know who he should ask.”

Bucky’s keen eyes showed the moment it dawned on him, his eyebrows shot up and his mouth sagged and he ran a weathered hand over his face, “Awww shit, Candy.” came garbled behind his palm. “Ah shit.” he said again with conviction as he shoved the hand into his pocket, wretched acknowledgment of her point clear on his face.

“I didn’t want to suggest it, told Ida it’s a fucking dangerous thing and I’ll never forgive if— but you all—“

Bucky grounded aloud, “Nah, nah she’s -Lu would solve it.” he muttered, shushing her. “Demarco really pummeled you the other day, huh?” he added, and that got her to meet his eye, she looked spooked and a little incensed, “Saw him fuckin’ you up behind B compound but sheesh, s’like he hollowed you out worse than a jacolantern; yer shifty as hell.”

“He-“ Maureen still felt like blanching at the memory of Benny’s terribly correct opinions, his disappointed eyes and his fist full of her flight jacket asking her what in the living fuck was wrong with her besides a concussion, a sick childhood and an ever nauseating jealousy of Buck Cleven’s paternal time and effort, “-he had some admonitions. After…after the other night.”

Bucky hummed, shitty smirk taking up residence on his face, “How ‘bout that.”

“I’m gonna be better.” she muttered and Bucky felt for her, could almost taste the echo of his identical and hollow determination to climb the mountain of bad habits when weak from spuds and pneumonia. He told himself the same every morning and fell into bed condoning his failure every night, like a ritual.

“You’re gonna get us those papers.” he corrected, shoving off the wall to come near her, give her the full Major treatment and maybe a friendly hand, “And you can promise your drinkin’ buddies news from the radio.”

Maureen nodded in understanding, no joy or animation left in her green eyes. She used to enjoy a bit of subterfuge, now she only felt hollow misery at the thought that she'd dragged Lu into this, too. This risk she hated so much and yet no one cared. Lu would be glad to be dragged in, it’s true, she was itching at the chance to be useful and to make Gale proud, it’s how the girl was wired. It’s how most girls were wired, Maureen supposed, desperate to make Gale Cleven approve. Lu’s enthusiasm wouldn’t make the sight of her being made to kneel in the mud and have a bullet put in her head any easier, wouldn’t make Maureen feel any less responsible for it when her lifeless body thudded to the earth.

All that lovely goodness stamped out.

Over a radio.

Bucky’s hand felt too hard and too big on her shoulder. He had gone before the vision cleared, mud and wire and the freezing main square at Ravensbruck fading back to the musty bunk room. Maureen shook herself and stood up to make herself somehow appealing, reamniante some semblance of the cheerful rashness that had led her to the Polish combine in the first place: she found it hard to inspire. She’d like to count that a victory but she knew better, she wasn’t reformed she was just tired.

A washed face and a fake smile and the promise of news from outside would have to be enough to bank all their risks on, it would have to be.

“Crank,” she greeted the man in the hall, flashing him clean, water brushed teeth and her gentlest, freshly soot lined eyes, “I’ve been tasked by Major Egan with an errand, spare a minute to babysit me?”

__________________________________

Bucky finds Buck Cleven in his own bunkroom, Demarco outside on watch and that’s all Bucky needs to know to guess the radio is out and Buck’s working like a fiend yet again to make it work. Sure enough, he’s hunched over the table with it, mittened hands shaking from cold and exhaustion and a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the paltry sweater he wears.

Bucky walks in and Gale gives him a soft, acknowledging glance before continuing to his work. Bucky takes up his usual place behind Buck’s left shoulder to watch and Buck, being used to it, goes on.

“My little Kriegie Marconi, huh?” Bucky allows the nagging impulse he has felt for weeks while standing in this position to finally exert itself, and his forefinger lifts and swirls in the curling gold strands of hair at the nape of Gale’s neck, his friend almost bolts away but then seems to choose a prey’s tactic and just stills, goes very still and Bucky scritches the scalp beneath his grab in assurance he don’t meant anything by it. He doesn’t think he does, at least.

Gale, wary and with a voice close to mechanized it’s so stilted, inquires with ever-present politeness, “You alright Bucky?”

It’s better than that whole ‘major’ business; getting called Major as if that meant shit anymore. “Yeah, ‘course I am.” Bucky rakes his fingers through the hairs there at the nape of that dainty neck, scritches the scalp with all four of his main ones, and uncovers a white long scar sliding round once he lifts the hairs there. “Why wouldn’t I be? Gonna be a father soon.”

Buck does jerk then, away from his touch and wheeling his chair around to glare at Bucky; it’s an impressively executed little pirouette and John misses the feel of his warm neck and oil soft hair. “Jesus John.” he reprimands.

“We’re gonna get outta here Buck.” John swears, he’s so sure of it because he cannot in all his thinking and predicting ever imagine a scenario where they don’t, and he chooses to think it’s not delusion but a good omen. “Ida’s gonna have that baby and when it’s safe we’ll all meet up.”

Gale is looking at him like he’s his own father again, Bucky knows that look, it always makes him equal parts ashamed and desperate, “Jus’ like that.” Gale mocks in a husky gust.

It’s devastating, and it’s intended to be, and Bucky could bear that with better humor if he could still touch Gale and his hair. “Just like that.”

Gale hums and it’s a mean sorta vocalization that makes Bucky’s heart thud and his skin prickle hot, it’s the kinda noise you kiss off a person, he thinks, but it’s Buck and so he doesn’t know what to do with it. “It’s gonna get you killed.” Buck is saying instead and Bucky lets him, “I know you all think she’s cracked up and maybe she has but it wouldn’t hurt to listen to Kendeigh sometimes when she’s tellin’ ya shit that a five year old could accurately guess, -goddamn it.”

His voice rose to a strong rage by the end and Bucky takes a chair opposite him, sick of standing there like a dumb dog waiting for his scolding to be over. “So what.” Bucky challenges him, “We just wait around and Brady pops out a child and the krauts let us keep it and it’s our new mascot and we all sing zippidy doo da, huh? Huh, Buck?”

Gale’s hands fell away from his face with a slam to the table, a shocking degree of anger showing for a split second and it gave Bucky an odd degree of gratification. “I jus’ want you to find a plan with better odds.”

Bucky sniffed and leaned forward, went in for the kill and Gale was looking at him like he expected it, like it was his turn to play daddy to everyone here and Gale for once was so beaten down he wouldn’t just allow the changing of the guard, he was close to angry at its lateness. It made Bucky’s heart thud.

“I’ve been listening to Kendeigh.” Bucky refuted briefly, “And we’ve got a plan.” Gale gave him a tired look of encouragement to go on, “How long’s it been since you slept? Huh, well, we got a plan. Practically perfect, or it will be, just need the radio.”

“Ain’t giving this away.” Gale said, “Not for anythin’, even useless.”

Bucky patted the table top in easy assurance, if he could have reached Buck’s thigh, he’d have patted that instead, “No, no, don’t need to give it away, just need it to work. So,” he softened his voice and his eyes tightened, “I’m callin’ Lu in.”

Oddly, Gale does not fight it. Not aloud, at least. There’s an anguished look of hate on his face and Bucky mirrors it. It’s for this place and the fucking awful choices they have to choose from every goddamn day.

“You run this by Ida?” is all he asks.

Bucky pops his flaking lips audibly, “What, need us both gangin’ up on you to agree? She’ll sign off. Smith’s an officer. Gotta remember that sometimes, Buck.”

The way his Buck swallows hard and dry contradicts his words, “I do remember that.”

“Really?” Bucky’s mouth gives a soft smile of doubtful incredulity and Gale’s mimics it, mournful but a smirk all the same, “Feel like she should answer to ‘Gale’s Baby’ these days. Lieutenant Smith who?”

Gale scoffs, “Careful now.”

“No really, she’s an officer and she wants to be treated like one. It’ll do her good to have work. Her kinda work.”

“Could get her killed.”

“Layin’ in her bunk could do that.”

Gale grunts, its sounds like an agreement.

“So I say Lieutenant Smith gets put on radio detail. Like her goddamn job description suggests. Huh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Gale lets out a shaky agreement.

“Aaaaand,” Bucky draws it out as he rises again and saunters over to Buck who is ready for him and loose this time, “how bout I go back to bein’ the one you’re frettin’ ‘bout all the time. Got me almost jealous of the girl. How ‘bout I do. Huh?”

Gale’s scoff is fond as anything as he looks up at John with cheerful derision, “And you ‘bout to be a father? Make me an old man? Fuck no, ya looney.”

“Alright.” Bucky concedes with hands up in surrender before lurching forward and grasping Gale’s rickety chair back by its wobbly spokes and hefting it partially off the ground, beautiful and outraged prude of an occupant still seated in it, “Then I’ll play daddy and put you to bed, how ‘bout that.”

“John Egan for fucks sake-“ Gale’s fists pounded on the meat of his shoulders and his outraged protests wafted against Bucky’s neck and his jabbing knees collided with the meat of his thighs and Bucky hadn’t felt so close to him or so happy to be alive since England.

“Major sir, the hell is goin’ on?” Demarco’s tame inquiry from the safety of the doorway made them both lose their grapple and they collided together onto the floor, bunk bed barely missed by their heads and the hapless chair mixed up between their limbs.

Bucky grinned, hip sore from his fall and kidneys suffering from Buck’s trapped elbow there, “Puttin’ Goldilocks to bed.” he replied.

DeMarco processed that and the scene before him with grave sobriety before saluting lazily and turning to go, “Right on, sir.”

John did his best to rise up without further pinching Gale who was indeed trapped beside him and beneath him, chair legs wound between a lanky human leg in a puzzle that Bucky realized might take some caution to untangle without harm. Strangely, Buck wasn’t moving, he was just looking up at him like a cat would their clumsy master who has done somethin’ stupid which was a surprise to neither. It was so innocuous a look and so nostalgic, it winded Bucky with the realization he hadn’t seen it in ages, just as he hadn’t felt his boney ribs against his own and the feel of his elegant hands yanking him around in a fight. This miserable place really was stomping out the glow in the best people.

“Ya know Buck,” he ventured, clearing his throat for extra casualness, “I’ve missed you.” When Gale only kept looking up at him, perfect porcelain face with its unsettling scars and wary eyes without a lick of storm in them, John Egan grabbed his shovel and dug his own grave a little deeper, drug a finger down his cheek. “Missed all this.”

Bucky didn’t know what he meant by “this” but it felt safer and worse all at once, since he did miss Buck but he and Buck never used to hang out on floors with a chair as chaperone. Mercifully, Buck neither points that out nor moves away, acting very much like he needed to heaped on the floor with Bucky and a stray chair every bit as much as John did. Like it’s doing him good.

“And you couldn’t’ve jus’ said.” Gale murmurs with the softest eye roll of the century and Bucky feels like beaming and it must show in his face so strong and bright after a sunless winter that after a flash Gale’s cheeks flame from it and he averts his eyes.

“I dunno Buck, could I?” Egan asks one blushing cheek and Gale hasn’t got a good reply for that, so they just lay there on the floor.

“Go on now, get off me.” Gale doesn’t shove at him, he presses his hand to John’s forehead like he would a dog and John goes, obedient as one.

———————————————————————-

They found Lu with Murph and Benny and Brady, measuring out what seemed to be lot lines between Love Shack #9 and the next combine, boot scuffed perimeters already visible in the light snow and drawn in a decently tidy rectangle. There were guards loitering nearby, nosey as always with their cigarettes and their antsy dogs anytime someone did something out there besides piss or pace or stare at the fence.

“What’s all this?” Bucky inquired cheerfully, coming up to them with Gale, bundled and shivering behind him.

Benny looked up from tilling a furrow with his boot, right where Lu’s mittened finger pointed out. “It’s for the garden. S’posed to be spring before long.”

“A Chicago man oughta know better, Benny.” Egan snarked.

“Need us?”

Bucky sniffed, a casual set to his body that belied his quest, “Just the little one.”

Smith promptly looked startled, then eager. “All well Majors?”

“Need your advice on the color of my cufflinks with this suit.” Bucky extended his arm and beckoned her, “C’mon back in for a minute. One of you too, need a watch to go with the cufflinks.”

———————————————————————

With Benny on guard, Brady and Kendeigh having excavated the radio’s shell from the floorboard and table leg in which it resided, the Buckies stood over Smith’s small frame as she sat at the table and inspected the simplistic device with keen eyed appreciation for the construct.

“It’s really marvelous.” she assured Cleven, running her fingers over the carefully coiled wire and precarious pin.

Gale didn’t even crack a smile. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked instead.

She shook her head, a frown gathering. “Never made one-“ she cautioned.

“-but you get the idea.”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“So what’s wrong.”

Lu ran her fingers over the wire, again and again, the dusty metal not insulated, just bare copper, likely stripped from somewhere. It reminded her of early days as a cadet when they threw chicken wire mixed with hydraulic lines at herself and her fellow rookie engineers and told them to sort it, testing to see if they knew which was which. It had been so rudimentary she had wanted to laugh until she realized others were being flunked.

This was so basic she was stumped.

“Take your time, Lu.” Bucky spoke up after a burdened pause during which she could almost feel Major Cleven breathing down her neck.

“Candy, can I try with the headphone?” she asked at last, frustrated and out of her element, just a few months out of a plane and she had already lost her touch.

Maureen passed it over and Lu pressed it to her ear, not to discern what was quite obviously radio silence, but to imagine the whole process in reverse, track it down the cord all the way to the base, each possible breakdown of the conduction.

She fingered the ramshackle diode with burgeoning suspicion. “What’s your crystal?”

“That’s just…lead.” Cleven muttered.

“From?”

“Ground pencils.” Bucky supplied cheerfully.

Smith bit her lip, “We need sulfur added. Lead won’t conduct on its own.” She figured Cleven knew that, the grim and unmoving set of his mouth suggested so.

“Just- sulfur?” Maureen asked.

“If I had sulfur we could add it to the lead dust, ignite it and-“ Smith grinned at Kendeigh, knowing that she alone may have shared her enjoyment of a small conflagration from time to time, “burn it down and you’ve got something close enough to Galena. Just need a pinch of it should work.”

Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed the mostly morose room. All except for the two girls grinning at each other over the hypothetical of a little chemistry experiment in a highly flammable wooden combine.

“We’ve got sandy soil.” Buck’s contemplative drawl spoke up, “Dunno if we could extract enough pure sulfur.”

Maureen stared back at Egan instead, “Other sectors have gotten portions of kits, chemistry kits, radio kits, they’ve been smuggled in with all sorts of stuff. Inside of a violin, oat bags. Nothing to fully build something. They might have sulfur. I could make inquiries and- well, Jack could pick it up next time the band goes over C compound to entertain the poor Aussie bastards.”

“How do you kno- nevermind, actually. Nevermind.” Bucky broke off, “Alright. Sure, why not. Ya sure that’s it?” he asked Lu once more.

She gave a helpless little shrug. “Gotta be. Or the wire’s dirty. Where’d it come from anyway?”

Gale gave Bucky a long suffering look as Bucky seemed to swell a couple inches and bounce back on his heels at the mention of his scrounging prowess. “The lamp.” he nodded above them all.

Jack Brady scoffed, short, clipped, betrayed, “That why it cuts out all the time? Strobed us so bad last night -thought the room was possessed.”

“Sacrifices Jack, sacrifices.”

———————————————————

Benny had hauled in enough water buckets to elicit some negative attention from the guards, and when the inspection came the inmates of the Love Shack insisted the drenched floors and table of the Majors’ barracks were due to sanitation post regurgitation. At night, with only one stolen torch light from Combine 15 to illuminate the endeavor, a basin of water beneath a smaller bowl in which lay their precious and recently procured ingredients, a science experiment began. The Majors and Ida gathered round, all looking as ghastly and spectral in the light of the flashlight as Brady’s fake ghost. It held the thrill of a bonfire night except for the stakes, which all in the room did their best not to dwell on.

“Zippo, Candy.” Lu gave the word and Maureen, with only the protection of Ida’s bent aviators to keep from a scorched cornea, flicked on her lighter and set the mixed powders ablaze.

It flamed up high and smelly, making Benny gag and mutter something about Meatball’s gas to a tittering Brady, and then died down to a yellow smoking ember.

“We should let it sit.” Lu surmised with a squeeze to Maureen’s only somewhat singed hand, her big dark eyes surveying the burnt bowl and their smoking experiment with glittery excitement at the possibility of success, “Let it cool, settle, maybe strain it. Can you get me a net? Oh Candy come now, get me a strainer?” she begged with a laugh as Maureen rolled her eyes at the idea of yet another trip to the Stalag Market for the most random items imaginable. If they hoped to not be suspicious, they’d need better lies or more money.

“How about cheesecloth?” Kendeigh tried not to grin indulgently- and failed- in the face of Lu and having recently been allowed to set something on fire

Lu kissed her cheek. “Cheesecloth would be perfect.”

In the end, cheesecloth did indeed prove perfect, and amongst the burnt dust of the combined minerals was a gritty little pinch full of the needed crystals. Or so Lu said, Gale agreed but the crease between his brows hadn’t lifted for two days; Bucky’s fingers had begun to twitch in antsy need to manually smooth them out. He imagined Maureen felt the same but she hadn’t said, uncharacteristically forbearant now she had some job to keep her sane. Even if it was playing fetch for Lu.

—————————————————————

“Well, this is it.” Gale muttered when the watch had been set once more, Murph and Hambone on the steps, Crank inside, Brady at the door, Benny at the window. Even Major Clark had joined them in the barracks for this final try and Lu’s cheeks were maroon from the attention even as her deft hands steadily pressed her concoction beneath its intended rod.

“Pass me the pliers, sir?” She asked and for a moment, the teacher became the apprentice and Gale fetched her the stalag forged tool, rudimentary like everything here yet the gripped and pulled and lifted same as the pliers back home. “You could check your look in this wire’s reflection.” She complimented Gale’s buffing of the copper wire.

He shrugged in turn. “Didn't wanna leave anythin’ to chance. That it?” he asked as her hands stalled and she surveyed her work.

Lu nodded solemnly. “Yes sir.”

Gale picked up the headphone from in front of him on the table like it was a gun he was about to bring to his head. “Here.” He extended it to her instead, “S’right, it was your job, you should be the first. Cmon.”

Despite her voiceless protest he pressed the headphones into her hands and Lu, never knowing how to disobey an officer, folded immediately.

For a good ten seconds everyone in the room held their breath as Smith pressed the headphone to her ear and gently wiggled the clothespin along the wire, searching and tuning, her face holding that old peaceful concentration they hadn’t seen since the last mission. She was at home with her mind tuned to another dimension. The pilots in the room knew that look, that was the look of someone at home with something that terrified them all the same, the gut swooping feeling of clearing the take off and sledding along the tops of the clouds. Wrong and strange and utterly incomparable to others, it was the closest to home one’s mind could be. Lu belonged somewhere on those electric currents and searching them out was like finding oneself again.

Then at last, Lu’s eyes sharpened out of their dreamy haze of concentration and she said, gentle as always, “It’s the BBC sir.”

💋 Hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s lifeblood, please feel free to scream in comments or the inbox, I love it and wanna hear it all. Trust me, nothing is “too dumb”. Your thoughts mean the world to me.

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Saturday Softness

Happy weekend every one! I'm going to start writing short little fluffy Clegan stories every weekend as a little treat to myself. Either Saturday or Sunday each week! Here's the first one featuring: post-war buckies (established relationship, as usual with me), a sick Gale, a fussy John and some soft, fluffy goodness!

“Buck?”

The lights are still on in their sitting room, in the kitchen despite the late hour. Paired with the fact that the front door was still unlocked, Bucky could only assume Gale was having one of his late night study sessions. He let his truck keys drop from his fingers onto the coffee table and stepped out of his shoes.

He wasn’t supposed to be home until the following day. They’d flown all over the country in the last week, giving the new pilots experience with long duration flights and while Bucky had loved every minute of it, he had been silently relieved when they’d cancelled the last trip due to weather issues and changed course for home.

Eight days away from their little slice of heaven out in the middle of nowhere, eight days without Gale, was more than enough to have Bucky feeling homesick. It’s the longest they’ve been apart since they found this property and Bucky’s already dreading the next time his job pulls him away for more than an average work day.

He walks through the sitting room and down the hall into the kitchen. Dishes are piled in the sink and Bucky feels an immediate pang of worry as he takes in the mess. Gale’s books and papers from school are haphazardly laying on the kitchen table, the coffee pot is half full and gone cold, his shoes aren’t neatly lined up by the back door and his coat is slung over the back of a chair instead of in its usual spot in the closet.

Gale isn’t a messy person. He cleans and organizes their home with a dedication that borderlines on obsessiveness and seeing the kitchen in disarray sends Bucky to the stairs immediately.

“Buck?”

His car was out front, he has to be home. There’s nothing around them for miles.

Silence greets him still as he makes his way up the stairs and into the hall.

Gale had been doing well when he’d left. They both are plagued with nightmares, both in sleep and while awake, but the frequency of them had decreased the longer they’d been home. They both had bad days, days when everything is too much, and the memories are too heavy to do much other than breathe and exist. But he’d called home just yesterday and Gale had been fine.

Bucky had listened to him ramble on about his classes and about some kind of theoretical physics problem that was giving him trouble but that he was enjoying working out. Despite not understanding a word of what he’d been listening to, he’d listened and made encouraging noises and soaked up the excitement in Gale’s voice with a smile on his face.

That was thirty-six hours ago, and Gale had been fine. But now he left a mess in the kitchen and he left all the lights on downstairs and he left the front door unlocked and Gale doesn’t do any of those things when he’s fine.

Their bedroom door is open, and the light is on but he’s not there and Bucky feels his heart pound in chest as he takes in another empty room.

“Buck?” He raises his voice and peeks his head into the spare bedroom that’s never been used and still isn’t being used.

A muffled noise catches his ears and he makes his way to the end of the hall where their bathroom door is cracked open. Modesty be damned, he doesn’t bother knocking, too panicked to care if Gale is simply doing his business.

The sight that greets him when he pushes into the small room melts his heart and breaks it in one go.

Gale is sitting on the tiled floor, back reclined against the tub, knees pulled up and arms wrapped around them, head pillowed atop. He’s wearing Bucky’s sweatpants and Bucky’s sleep shirt and he looks too small and too vulnerable and he hasn’t acknowledged Bucky’s presence and Bucky hasn’t seen his eyes yet.

“Buck?” He lowers his voice and winces when it still makes the smaller man flinch. But it also makes him raise his head and then blue eyes, red rimmed and a little swollen are looking up him, confusion and something that looks a little like relief shining in them.

“John?”

Bucky practically sinks forward and lands on his knees in front Gale when that raspy voice hits him, quiet and weak and wrecked.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

“What’re you doin’ here? You’re not comin’ back ‘till tomorrow.”

Bucky reaches forward and pushes sweaty bangs from Gale’s forehead, smooths them back and then lets his hand slide back forward to cradle the other man’s jaw.

“Last flight got scrapped, but that doesn’t matter,” Bucky tells him. He’s relieved he found Gale safe and sound, but his worry has only increased. “Why are you on the floor? Are you sick?”

Gale nods miserably and then lets the weight of his head rest in Bucky’s palm.

“Stomach thing,” Gale rasps out. “Got sick so many times I figured I’d just stay here. Saves me a trip.”

A small smile tugs at Bucky’s lips but doesn’t settle as he takes in the sorry state of his man.

“How long have you been getting sick for?”

“Don’t know. What time it is?” Gale shrugs.

“It’s late, after midnight,” Bucky tells him. He smooths his thumb over a pale cheek and watches a pout form on Gale’s lips.

“Since afternoon,” Gale breathes out. “Think my lunch did this to me.”

He looks up at Bucky with big blue eyes and Bucky can’t help but smile at the betrayal in them.

“Want me to kill it for you?”

“Yeah,” Gale nods against his hand. “It’s the casserole in the glass pan. Make it suffer.”

A laugh barks out of Bucky, and he loves the small smile that pulls at Gale’s own face at the sound.

“Missed you,” Gale mumbles, staring at him. “Missed you a lot.”

“I missed you too.” Affection blooms in his chest. “When was the last time you got sick, huh? Think it’s safe to relocate somewhere more comfortable?”

He watches as Gale lifts his head and eyes the toilet to the right with narrowed eyes, brow furrowing. “Think it’s been a while. Don’t wanna get sick in our room again though.”

Bucky’s heart gives a painful lurch at the recrimination in his tone. He wraps his hand around Gale’s fingers and gives them a squeeze.

“You got sick in our room?”

“The first time. I cleaned it up,” Gale tells him, eyes getting brighter, and Bucky feels unreasonably guilty for not being home earlier. It couldn’t have been helped but imaging Gale sick and miserable and scrubbing his own mess off the floor in their room makes him want to put in for early retirement and never leave his side again.

“Of course you did,” Bucky squeezes his fingers again and then stands up, still holding the hand in his. “Let’s get you off the floor, Buck. I’ll help you back in if you need it.”

Gale heaves a put-upon sigh but pushes himself to his feet. Before he completes the transition though, he’s pitching forward and falls easily into Bucky’s chest with a quiet noise of discomfort.

“Easy, I gotcha,” Bucky takes the opportunity and wraps Gale in his arms, presses his lips into the sweaty mess of hair atop his head before he tucks it under his chin. “Dizzy?”

He feels Gale nod against his collarbone, so he rubs up and down his back, feeling trembling muscles under his palm. Gale wraps both arms around his waist and squeezes with a surprising amount of strength.

“I really missed you,” he mumbles the words into Bucky’s uniform shirt.

Bucky closes his eyes against the emotions welling in him.

“I need to brush my teeth,” he says next, but he makes no move to extract himself from Bucky’s hold, seems to melt further into him instead and Bucky chuckles into his hair.

“Let’s freshen you up and get you to bed.”

He brackets Gale against the sink, a long line of support against his back as Gale brushes his teeth and splashes water on his face. It leaves the ends of his hair damp and curling and Bucky smiles at him in the mirror when their eyes meet in the glass.

It’s a slow shuffle down the hall and into their bedroom and Bucky warms inside when Gale refuses to swap Bucky’s ratty sweats for his own pajamas. He has a feeling Gale has been wearing his clothes to bed since he left, and it makes something possessive curl around his heart.

Gale’s arms are shaking as he lowers himself into their bed and he looks exhausted by the time Bucky pulls their sheets and quilt up to his chin. He sits on the edge of the bed and lets his hand rest on Gale’s forehead, fingers playing with the damp hair there.

“I was going to be waiting for you here when you got home tomorrow,” Gale’s tired rasp is quiet and soothing in the dark room. “Had a whole plan. Was gonna really blow your mind.”

“Is that right?” Bucky grins down at him. He imagines coming home to an empty house, yelling Gale’s name like he’d done tonight as he explored the rooms and finding him naked in their bed instead of sick and miserable on their bathroom floor. It would have ended with him keeping Gale in bed the entire night and most of the next day, and it still is ending that way. Just under less appealing circumstances. “I would’ve loved that.”

“I’m sorry you came home to this instead.” The guilt in his tone has Bucky moving his hand into his hair, scratching at his scalp.

“None of that, now,” he chides. “This isn’t your fault.”

They watch each other in the low light shining in from the hallway, a comfortable silence settling as Bucky continues dancing his fingers through Gale’s hair.

Bucky can’t help but wonder what Gale’s night would have ended like if his trip hadn’t been cut short. Would he have slept on the bathroom floor? When he finally got up, would a dizzy spell have taken him down without Bucky there to catch him? He could’ve cracked his head on the sink, on the floor. Bucky could’ve come home to a nightmare scenario and the thoughts make his breathe stutter and his eyes burn.

He hates seeing Gale sick, injured, sad, scared. He had his fill of it during the war and he knows they haven’t escaped it, but he wishes he could banish every bad thing from this home and they could just live in the soft, safe comfort of one another.

“Hey,” Gale breaks him from his spiraling thoughts, brow scrunching and he gets a hand out from under the quilt and latches it onto the end of Bucky’s tie. “Quit worrying. I’m alright.”

“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?”

“It’s what you’ve been doin’ since you met me, Bucky.” The look on Gale’s face is fond, tender even.

“Well, can ya blame me?” Bucky untangles cold fingers from his tie and covers them with his own. “One look at you, with that sweet smile and those big blue eyes and I was a goner, Buck. Knew I needed to keep ya.”

Gale’s pale face gets some color, cheeks pinking as he turns his head into the pillow.

“And the first time I saw you do that,” Bucky lets the hand in Gale’s hair drift down to graze his finger over the heated skin over Gale’s cheek, the bridge of his nose. “I knew I needed to see it every day for the rest of my life.”

“Stop,” Gale mumbles into the pillow, bashful as always in the face of Bucky’s affections. Bucky pinches his chin between his thumb and index finger and turns his head.

“Never.” He punctuates the word with a gentle press of his lips to Gale’s and feels the smaller man melt into pillow beneath him, a soft smile sitting on his face when he pulls back.

“Come to bed?” Gale’s fingers bunch around his shirt and give him a tug. “Missed falling asleep with you.”

He’s blinking slower, exhaustion etched across his features.

“I’m going to get you some water and something light to eat.” Gale pulls a face at his words and Bucky clucks his tongue. “Don’t argue. You need food and you’re probably dehydrated as hell.”

Gale pouts up at him and gives his shirt another tug, but Bucky holds firm.

“Just give me twenty minutes to clean up the kitchen and lock up the downstairs. Rest a bit until I get back with the goods.”

“The kitchen,” Gale starts, eyes wider than before.

“Shut it, Buck.” Bucky scolds. “You’re sick and you’re allowed to leave the dishes in the sink. Let me take care of everything.” He clears stubborn hair off Gale’s forehead to create a place for his lips and kisses the space between his eyebrows. “Let me take care of you.”

When he sits back up, Gale’s eyes are closed but he blinks them open a moment later.

“I’m really glad your home, John.”

“Me too, baby.” He pulls the quilt back up and tucks Gale’s arm back under. Fusses for a minute and places a trash bin on the floor within reach by Gale’s head. The sick man eyes it with an embarrassed huff but doesn’t protest that it might be necessary.

“You shout if you need me, alright?” Bucky tells him, hand splayed over his chest on top of the covers, thumb brushing idly back and forth. “I’m gonna go murder the casserole that hurt my sweetheart.”

Gale’s breathy chuckle follows him out the door and he speeds up his steps and lengthens his strides, eager to get out of his uniform and into their bed.

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angelaclev

7 months ago