Study&hockey

On the first day of his winter break, Gale wakes before dawn.

The house is quiet, John still asleep, and Gale moves through the kitchen without making too much noise. He thinks about telling John his plan but decides against it. For all he knows he might fail to make anything edible. 

Gale had received more recipes than Elaine promised him. He recognized sausage hash among them and doubted he could make anything that tasted near Marge’s version. The recipe looks simple enough on paper, but he quickly discovers he has no idea what constitutes the proper size for diced potatoes, or how to achieve that elusive golden brown status. The smell of charred starch fills the kitchen soon as he burns the first batch. He turns the heat down, attempting the second batch with more patience, only for a careless angle of the knife to make a potato roll the wrong way under his palm, and the blade catches the side of his finger.

“Christ,” he curses, more exasperated than hurt. Years of training to handle a knife against the enemy, and he can't even cut a potato straight. He runs the cut under the tap, wraps it in a dish towel, and presses down, willing the bleeding to stop before John wakes up. Then he goes back to the stove one-handed, awkward and stubborn, determined to finish what he started.

By the time John's footsteps sound on the stairs, the potatoes are mostly golden, if a little irregular. He appears in the doorway mid-knot on his tie, then stops, taking in the pan of hash and the small disaster area that used to be the kitchen.

He moves to the stove, peering at the hash with too much interest. “You made this?”

“Not sure it turned out right,” Gale says, suddenly very aware of the mess he's made. “You don’t gotta eat it.”

“Are you kidding? This smells incredible, Buck. When’d you learn to cook?”

“I didn't. I'm winging it.”

Looking into the pan makes Gale sweat. His left hand comes up to dab at his forehead, and he forgets the thin line of red welling up along the cut—until John catches sight of it.

“Hey.” John's voice changes, all the teasing dropping out of it at once. He catches Gale's wrist before Gale can pull it away. “What'd you do to yourself?”

“It's nothin’.” Gale tries to tug his hand back, mortified, but John's grip is firm. “Knife slipped.”

“Doesn't look like nothing.” 

Gale was ready to say something in return. The cut is not even a quarter inch. They’ve both seen much worse. But John is turning the finger toward the light, inspecting it with the focus they would’ve reserved for compound fracture or gangrene. And before Gale can tell him to leave it, John brings the finger to his mouth and closes his lips around it.

A small noise escapes from Gale’s throat, the rest of his breath caught somewhere between his ribs. His body goes flush at that single gesture, then is locked up and pliant at the same time. Something velvet warm presses lightly against the cut, and Gale loses control of the tremor in his hand. John has to feel it in his mouth. He doesn’t let go. His tongue presses harder as he sucks around the tip of Gale’s finger. It doesn’t even feel like part of Gale's body anymore, just flesh disappearing in plump, pink red; only, it's all he can still feel, the part of him inside another man.