Ad Lunam, Ad Astra

—

November 8, 2026 Nassau Bay, TX

“John?” Gale calls out as he squints at the mirror in their bedroom, concentrating on getting his tie straight before rebuttoning his waistcoat. “John? You out there somewhere?”

“Yeah!” comes a distant response.

Satisfied that he looks halfway decent, Gale adjusts his suit jacket and checks his watch. They’re not late for the pre-launch gala, per se, but they’re cutting it a little closer than he’d like. He reaches for the bottle of cologne on his dresser, and the sticky note falls to the floor. 

Call from James Cleven.

He closes his eyes, clenches his jaw. When he picks it up, the feeling of the sticky note between his fingers is overwhelming, dry paper on calloused skin, like sandpaper. It makes him grimace as he runs his thumb along the lower edge, where the number is scrawled in the secretary’s loopy handwriting. 

“Buck? You need something?”

Gale sighs, reaching his hand out to set the note back on his dresser. And then he crumples it and throws it in the trash instead.

He has bigger problems to deal with right now. He doesn’t need another one.

Instead he runs a hand through his hair, glances at himself one more time in the mirror. He tests out a smile, fixes his jacket again, and follows the sound of his husband’s voice through the house.

Bucky’s been getting more distant in recent days, drifting just an inch further and further away the more milestones they pass on their way to launch day. He acts like he isn’t, like everything’s fine, like he can’t even fathom there being something to worry about. It’s like all the progress they’ve made and all the effort they’ve put into preparing themselves mentally for this mission has just gotten shoved out the window, and they’re back to old ways – posturing and stoicism. 

It’s driving Gale crazy.

He’s sure Bucky knows he’s not fooling anyone, at least not Gale. He can see the nerves in his husband’s body language and facial expressions, written out like a book, and he can feel the way it fills the air between them. Bucky’s been jittery, rigid, like he’s being forced to play a role and he doesn’t know what’ll happen if he makes a wrong move.

As if it’s not the first thing on everyone’s minds anyway.

Gale finds his husband standing in the living room, frowning as his fingers twitch and fumble around cufflinks that he just can’t finagle through the holes. His brow is furrowed in consternation disguised as irritation, and Gale can tell he’s biting down on the inside of his cheek. 

“Hey,” Gale says softly. He absently runs a hand over Pepper’s ears as she greets him with a wagging tail.

Bucky glances up and shoots him a smile somewhere between relief and embarrassment. “Hey. Sorry.”

“Feeling okay?” Gale asks, stepping in close. He gently reaches for Bucky’s hands, prying one cufflink from fingers that don’t fight back nearly enough. He secures it easily, and moves onto the other one. 

“I’m fine,” Bucky says. He visibly forces himself to relax, trying to look sincere, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“John,” Gale sighs. “It’s okay, you know, if-”

If you’re scared, nervous, worried, whatever. It’s okay if tonight feels like too much. It’s okay if you’re having a hard time. It’s okay. 

But he doesn’t get the words out before they get cut off. 

“I’m okay, Gale,” Bucky insists again. His smile gets stronger, that winning, cocky thing that he uses to charm everyone he meets, and he leans in for a quick kiss. He presses his hand delicately over Gale’s, whose fingers are still grazing over the cufflink. “Thank you. Now stop worrying about me and finish getting ready. Your hair’s a mess.”

Gale stumbles as he gets shoved through the kitchen and back into the bedroom. “We really should talk about it, you know,” he says quietly as he stands in the doorway of the en suite. He’s tired of dancing around this not-so-silent elephant in the room. He’s tired of the pseudo-distance that has warped the space between them into something so small and yet uncrossable. He wonders if Bucky can hear the hint of nerves, of pleading, in his voice. Actually, he’s almost sure he does. He knows Gale too well not to. 

I need to talk about it, he thinks about saying. He thinks, for a moment, about just being honest. 

But there’s Bucky in his suit and tie, all buttoned up like the professional, the husband, the man he has always fought to be. He won’t meet Gale’s eyes, looking somewhere next to him at the painting of Cape Canaveral that hangs beside the bathroom door. They’re just days away now. In a few days, Gale will leave for the Cape, and Bucky will be here, and they will be one step closer to Artemis 4. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky says, tagging a soft chuckle onto the end to try to sell it, even though there’s nothing left to sell. And then he turns away. 

Gale is left, lips parted in an unspoken ask, alone in the bathroom doorway. He watches Bucky stop in the hallway, give Pepper a scratch behind the ear, and then head for the front door, leaving Gale inside on his own surrounded by a confusing haze that feels an awful lot like something breaking. Crack by crack. 

In the bathroom, looking in the mirror, he brushes his fingers through his own messy, soft hair, unstyled the way his husband has always liked. He thinks about the way Bucky used to laugh, chaotic and loud and unapologetic, as he played keep away with the gel. Gale wonders when Bucky last laughed quite like that. 

Surely, not too long ago. Surely. 

He’s still John Egan, after all. 

Cocksure, king of the world. 

The carefree balance to Gale’s carefulness. 

But the closer they get to launch, Gale has noticed. 

His eyes shift from the mirror to the hair gel and back. The mirror is new, the one Benny went out and bought before Bucky came home, but Gale swears he can still see cracks in the glass. He can hear the shatter, feel the shards lodged in his skin. He still has a faint scar over his knuckles, only visible when the light hits it right. 

He feels frozen, like he did that night, caught between the memory of Bucky laughing, and the memory of standing here, wondering if they’d ever joke around like that again. It’s so stupid, that he’s getting caught up in it now. Just another one of those things that he might never feel the same about. 

Bucky tries to hide it, the nerves that are building up as they get closer. Gale knows he doesn’t want to feel them, that he’s trying to shove them down and be the guy he thinks he’s supposed to be. He doesn’t want Gale to see the way his hands shake more now than they have in months, or the way he spaces out here and there when they aren’t at work, or the way he sometimes has to carefully control his words so his tongue doesn’t stutter. 

But Gale can see it. And Bucky should know that, after this long, he’s not getting away with hiding shit. 

And yet when Gale tries to talk about it, all he gets is I’m fine.

And Gale can’t help but be hurt. He can’t help but think, no you’re not! You’d be crazy if you were. 

He can’t help but think, you’re not okay, and neither am I. 

Neither am I. 

And you’ve left me here alone.

It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair. 

It’s not fair that it happened in the first place. It’s not fair that Bucky won’t talk about it. Maybe it’s not fair for Gale to ask him to. It’s not fair that Gale is about to set sail on the greatest expedition of his life, and he is stuck in this limbo of fear that never had to exist before. Selfishly, perhaps, it’s not fair that this moment has become wrapped in something so difficult to work through. 

It’s not fair that on this day – when they should be celebrating – he has to bear so much on his shoulders.

So, fuck it then. If Bucky wants to ignore it, Gale will too. At least for now. For a little longer. Today is about Artemis 4. Today is about marking a moment in time. Today is about standing tall, passing the torch, carrying the fire to new frontiers and new beginnings. And he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do his crew the honor of giving them this, giving them everything they deserve. He’ll be damned if he doesn’t give himself the honor. He deserves that. He’s sure that, after everything, he must deserve that.

So he puts the gel in his hair, takes one more look in the mirror, and he heads outside. 

All signs of nerves are gone from Bucky’s face and body when Gale finds him out in the front yard. He’s the picture of domesticity, standing there at the end of the driveway, chatting with their neighbor, Jane, as her daughter, Maggie, runs around with Pepper, laughing like it’s the most fun she’s had in her life with curly red hair flying in all directions. Cradled against Bucky’s chest is a tiny baby, Maggie’s new brother, only a couple of months old. He’s awake and alert, wide eyes trained on Bucky’s face, and Bucky makes faces back at him, trying to get him to laugh.

“Gale!”

Gale looks up in time to narrowly miss getting bowled over by his own dog, kneeling down to intercept her as Maggie comes running up behind her.

“Gale!” Maggie exclaims again, skidding to a stop in front of him and throwing herself onto Pepper, who quits wriggling around in Gale’s grasp long enough to lick Maggie’s face all over. “Ew,” the little girl complains, but her giggling just makes Pepper keep doing it until Gale pulls her away. 

“What’s up, Mags?” he asks, shoving Pepper off to go chase some birds.

“I haven’t seen you in forever,” Maggie tells him. She crosses her arms in disapproval, pouting dramatically. 

“Forever?” Gale asks. He checks his watch. “That’s a long time, Mags. Especially since I just saw you last week.”

Maggie shrugs, her pout giving way to a reluctant smile. “But you’re never around anymore.”

Gale sighs, trying to stave off the guilt. “Well that’s ‘cause I’m going to the moon, remember? In two and a half weeks.”

“But not yet.”

“No,” Gale agrees. “But it’s real soon. We need to train a lot, make sure we’re good and ready so we can do our job and make it home.” He leans in close to Maggie and turns to nod toward Bucky. “You gonna look after your Uncle John for me while I’m gone?”

Maggie nods emphatically. “Yes!”

“Good,” Gale says. And he means it. “I’m counting on you.”

Maggie leans in conspiratorially, and Gale thinks she’s going to say something about his husband. But instead, she whispers, “Do you have my challenge coin?”

It makes Gale laugh. She’s growing up too fast, but she’s still a kid. And she wants the cool gifts that her honorary uncles have come to spoil her with. She already has a coin from Artemis 3, and Gale, of course, promised her one from Artemis 4. “It’s packed away,” he tells her. “To make sure it gets on the rocket.”

“So it can go to the moon with you.”

“Exactly. When I come back, you’ll have two challenge coins that have been to the moon. You’ll be the coolest kiddo in school.”

“Does Ollie get one?” Bucky asks, walking up to them with the baby dozing off, head resting on his shoulder. Gale vaguely worries he’ll get drool or something on that nice suit, but after everything, of all the things to be worried about, he decides that’s not one of them.

“Of course Ollie will get one,” Gale says, standing up straight again. “He’ll be the coolest baby in Nassau Bay.” 

Carefully, he takes the baby boy from his husband’s arms and tucks him against his chest, bouncing him gently. He can’t believe how big the little thing has already gotten, and he feels a little guilty all over again for not being able to help Jane out more since he was born. Her husband was able to be here for a while, but now he’s back on the other side of the world. Gale can’t imagine how hard it’s been on Jane, but he wonders if it's worth it to have something so precious. 

He looks at her, and he thinks, with the way she looks at her kids, it must be. He wonders if his own mother looked at him the same way, and deep down, he knows that she did.

Jane smiles at him, shaking her head. “I swear if I’m not careful, you two will turn both my children into astronauts.”

“Would that be so bad?” Bucky asks.

She sighs, hands on her hips. “You’ve got Maggie dead set on it,” she laments. “I don’t know if I can handle two of them following in your footsteps. But at least I know they’ll have someone to show them the way.”

—

The pre-launch gala.

The event of the year for NASA… other than the mission itself, that is. Everyone loves to hate it, and yet everyone shows up dressed in their finest, smiles on their faces, glasses in hand. In the first 45 minutes, Gale has politely greeted no fewer than six elected officials, along with every NASA higher up and the family members of each of his crewmates. He remembers the drill from last year.

It’s just that now, he’s the one in the spotlight, the one that everyone is sizing up, hedging their bets on. He’s expected to have the perfect answer to every question, the perfect smile for every introduction, the perfect laugh for every joke, and the perfect anecdote for every starry-eyed gaze. Tonight, he and his crew are not just astronauts being honored with a spectacular send-off steeped in NASA tradition. They’re a spectacle. They’re a political statement. They’re a show.

Dance monkey dance, right?

At least everyone is on their best behavior. The grand ballroom of this Houston hotel is draped in white and blue florals and linens, with bits and pieces of NASA history on display around the room and up on the stage. Passed hors d'oeuvres are making the rounds throughout the room, fancy enough that Gale doesn’t even know what they are, and everyone is dressed to the nines, here to see off the next set of great adventurers. 

Gale smiles kindly at the couple he was just introduced to – a Maryland senator and her husband who served in the Air Force – and he politely excuses himself. He’s somehow lost track of his husband as well as his crew members, and he glances around the room in search of a familiar face. 

“You look like you need saving,” a friendly voice teases as someone taps him on the shoulder from behind.

Gale chuckles when he turns to see Sandra, double fisting champagne glasses. She looks stunning tonight, in a navy blue gala dress with her shoulder-length hair gently curled. A silver hairpiece catches the light, making it sparkle as she tilts her head back and gulps a sip of champagne.

“I’m perfectly capable of saving myself,” he says, but he smiles in thanks.

She extends the other champagne glass, and Gale moves to politely decline when she says “Don’t worry. It’s sparkling water.”

He nods and accepts the glass gratefully. It would give him something to do with his hands, at least. “You look like the stars themselves tonight,” he tells her.

Sandra does a little curtsy. “Why thank you. You look quite dashing yourself.”

“Dashing?”

“Spiffy, perhaps,” she offers with a grin, making Gale laugh. “Well in any case, I’ve come to return you to your husband.”

Gale snorts into his glass, nearly inhaling carbonated water, and he has to take a moment to try to inconspicuously cough it out of his throat. “Is that right?”

Sandra smirks and loops her arm through his. “He says he can’t very well pass the torch to the next commander if the next commander ‘isn’t fucking here,’” she explains, with a terrible impression of Bucky’s voice. “They want to start speeches.”

“Mmm,” Gale hums, obediently escorting Sandra through the crowd toward the front of the room.

Up near the stage, they find the rest of the crew, along with John and Chick laughing about something ridiculous, John all smiles and boisterous laughter with a glass of champagne in his hand. Gale feels a sense of déjà vu smack him right in the chest, sending him reeling back to last year. Like nothing had happened in between. Like it never happened. Like nothing had changed at all. 

This time last year, no one ever would have even expected something like that to happen. And now they’re back in the same spot all over again.

Gale’s husband catches his eye, and he beams at him, reaching a hand out to drag him away from Sandra. “About time!” he teases. “You’re the guest of honor and you’ve kept us waiting around.”

Gale blinks, briefly comprehending the way his heart is beating just a little too fast, and then he rolls his eyes. Glancing at his watch pointedly, he says “We’re right on schedule, you dork.”

Bucky leans in and kisses Gale on the cheek, and a camera flashes somewhere nearby. Only a handful of photographers were allowed into this event, but Gale wonders what headline will show up above that particular image. 

To the rest of the world, this has been the plan for months, since before Artemis 3. Bucky would ceremoniously hand the reins to Buck, commander to commander, husband to husband, entrusting the next Artemis mission to his hands. To the rest of the world – if you ignore that brief period of time where literally everything went to hell and no one knew if they’d come out the other side – tonight was never a question.

This mission was never a question.

Commander Gale Cleven was never a question.

Someday someone would write a book about it, Gale was certain. And then everyone would know how close they came to cancelling the Artemis program.

They’d know about the long nights and the board meetings and the safety briefs and the investigations and the lobbying with congress and the yelling across conference rooms and the quiet, business-like negotiations as they went through file after file after file, parsing out what went wrong and if it was worth it. 

It wasn’t particularly unique. Every time a space mission goes wrong, the world questions why they fly.

Just look at Apollo 1 or Apollo 13 or Challenger or Columbia.

But it wasn’t just the Artemis program, was it?

Someday, the world would also know that at some point, Gale Cleven was slated to be booted from this mission. And he can only hope that that particular plot point doesn’t go down in history for the wrong reasons.

“You okay, angel?” Bucky whispers, leaning his weight against Gale’s side.

“Hmm?” Gale glances over at him, taken out of his own head. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Chick is up on stage now, and he taps a fork against his champagne flute. Gradually, the ambient noise of a hundred different conversations dies down to a simmer, and then the room is quiet, and Chick smiles politely at the room.

“Thank you all for coming tonight, as we prepare to send another group of the world’s finest astronauts to set foot on the surface of the moon.”

Gale sips sparkling water out of his champagne glass as he listens to Chick’s speech, describing the hard work that’s gone into the Artemis program, outlining the goals of the mission, and listing the vast accomplishments of the astronauts.

“…And under the sure-footed guidance of mission commander Major Gale Cleven,” he says, nodding to Gale, “we trust that this crew will do us proud.”

Gale feels himself smile politely, nodding to the audience members that turn their gazes in his direction as Chick continues. He finds himself unable to pay attention, though, and he can’t help but stifle a chuckle at the choice of wording. ‘Sure-footed guidance,’ as if Chick had always felt that way… as if he’d never stopped feeling that way.

“It’s for the best, Gale.”

Gale couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But there Chick was, leaning back against his desk – ‘Director, Manned Spaceflight Program’ etched in neat letters on a silver nameplate – his arms crossed over his chest and his face hard in that way that tells Gale he doesn’t like what he’s saying but he’s acting like it’s all clear-cut anyway. That’s Gale’s in, as far as he’s concerned. Chick doesn’t know what’s right. 

No one knows what’s right.

“You don’t believe that,” Gale said calmly. He stood straight, head high, feet shoulder width apart with his hands clasped behind him. Almost parade rest, out of habit, but he forces himself to relax, to be less rigid. Chick isn’t his commanding officer, and Gale wouldn’t give him that power.

“What if I do, son?”

“You don’t know what to believe.”

“Any sensible person would take you off this mission,” Chick insisted. He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, and in that moment, Gale could see how tired he was. Maybe he’d been that tired since John came home.

“We’re under fire,” he admitted, though it’s nothing Gale didn’t already know. “The administration wants to cut our funding. The media is doubting if we can pull this off. The public doesn’t know if they can trust us to bring you home alive.”

“What else is new?” Gale scoffed. NASA has been under fire for decades. People get upset when space travel turns out to be as dangerous as they all know it is.

Sometimes bad funding and bad actors put missions in a tight spot, and certain people make the wrong choices. Sometimes, things just go wrong. It doesn’t matter what causes a tragedy; all that matters is that there’s someone to blame.

“Don’t be complacent,” Gale said dryly. “Don’t cut corners. We’re better than that now.” 

Chick shook his head. “They’re worried that keeping you on is being complacent.”

“I can handle this, and you know it, Chick.”

“Gale-” Chick trailed off, bit his lip in an uncharacteristic way. There it was, that look of pity. 

“Don’t give me that,” Gale all but sneered. He’s so, so sick of it.

“You have to understand-”

“No, I don’t, actually.”

“If I send you on this mission-”

“You will send me on this mission.”

“If I send you on this mission.” Chick took a deep breath. “The world will be all over you. All over me, all of us. You will be under pressure unlike any of your colleagues who have gone up in an Orion capsule. And you better be ready for it. Because if you aren’t, they will tear us apart.”

“I know,” Gale said quietly. He refused to let his demeanor slip, even as the words hit him. He tried to let them slide right off.

“If I send you on this mission, and it’s a mistake… we will be done. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyone in my shoes would ground you.”

“...I know.”

“Any astronaut in your shoes should be grounded.”

“I know.”

Chick was quiet for a while as they stood there in that office, surrounded by the accomplishments of the directors and the commanders that came before them. On the shoulders of giants, trying to fill some pretty damn big shoes. “If I send you on this mission,” he finally said. He took a deep breath as he looked Gale right in the eye. “...Gale, If I send you on this mission, you have to come home.”

Gale didn’t flinch, no matter how badly he wanted to. He clenched his jaw, looked right back at Chick. 

“I know.”

The room erupts in applause, and Bucky slips from Gale’s side, heading for the stage. It jolts Gale back to the present, making his heart jump, and he blinks, trying to catch up. Bucky hugs Chick, patting him on the back before he takes the microphone and turns to face the crowd with a grin and a wave. “Look at all you beautiful people!” he exclaims.

It’s time to pass the torch, one commander to the next, just as it was supposedly always meant to be.

Chick takes John’s place beside Gale and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “You ready?” he whispers. 

“I’ve addressed a crowd before, Chick.”

Chick snorts and takes a big gulp of champagne. “You know what I mean.”

“I told you I was ready. I meant it.” 

In the end, he doesn’t know how he convinced Chick. He doesn’t know what went on behind closed doors. There were more conversations after that. Some of them loud, some of them not. Some of them in their official capacity as NASA employees, and some of them in a living room over a beer. Gale remembers shouting at one another, both trying to be heard and neither of them sure they were in the right anyway. He remembers sitting next to one another on a couch, talking quietly, stiltedly, about everything that had happened and everything that might happen next.

He remembers Chick pulling a crumpled note out of his pocket, messy penmanship, a word on the edge smudged by a drop of water. “We commit his soul to the stars, and we hope he will fly among them with the same fire in his heart.”

A draft of the statement he was meant to read if John didn’t come home. He’d been carrying it around all this time, unable to let go. 

It stopped Gale short, just for a minute, his breath catching in his throat. He traced his fingers over the letters, let his eyes flutter closed as he took a deep breath and wondered when they’d all stop living in this world of almosts.

“I don’t want to write another one,” Chick said quietly, and before Gale left that night, he hugged Chick tight. He didn’t say anything. What could he say?

The truth of the matter is that technically, Chick was right. The world did not expect Gale to stay on this mission after Artemis 3, and for good reason. But he had no intention of letting this slip through his fingers, and he has to believe that he was right, that he’s ready, that he can handle it.

There’s no room for doubt. Not anymore.

But the words still float through his head, echoing like a ghost that can’t find its way home – We commit his soul to the stars, and we hope he will fly among them with the same fire in his heart.

John turns his head and looks right at Gale, and their eyes lock onto each other. Gale wonders, not for the first time, how much John knows. He wonders what’s going through his head right now, with all of the veiled fear and unsaid words between them. But John’s smile broadens, and he reaches out a hand. “And now, everyone, it is my pleasure to introduce your next Artemis mission commander, my wonderful, amazing husband, Major Gale Cleven.”

Applause echoes through the ballroom again, deafening in Gale’s ears, his crew cheering the loudest out of everyone. As he moves to step away from Chick, a strong hand grips his shoulder. 

“I’m proud of you, kid,” Chick says, raising a glass to him.

So when Gale finds himself looking out into a sea of people – all looking back at him, cheering for him – despite everything, he tries to shove it all out of his mind. 

This is his moment. This is his first glimpse at everything he’s worked for becoming real. He lets himself wonder how the hell he got here. Just a lanky country boy from Wyoming, standing here in Houston to address the who’s who of space travel just days before leading his crew to the moon. He can’t help but chuckle, shaking his head as he smiles and waves back before taking his husband’s hand. 

Bucky leans in and kisses him, right there in front of everyone, and squeezes his hand. “I’m proud of you, angel,” he whispers. He hands over the microphone, and then Gale is alone. 

“John Egan, everyone.” He motions after Bucky as he trots down the steps to join their friends at the base of the stage. “One of NASA’s finest.”

Gale rubs at the back of his neck as everyone cheers once more for their local hero, and then he clears his throat. 

“Good evening,” he begins, looking around the room. “Thank you for joining us tonight, friends, family, and everyone who has made the Artemis program possible. It’s not really a secret that the year since Artemis 3 has been hard, but it’s because of everyone in this room that we’ve made it here today. It’s because of you that we’re able to move forward. It’s because of you that we didn’t lose the moon, but instead get to continue our mission of lunar exploration – and beyond – as representatives of all humanity.”

Gale hesitates, his eyes flicking to Bucky, who is standing there looking so perfect, so proud. He takes a deep breath, his smile widening. “And it’s because of you that my husband is alive and well, and just as bold and indomitable as ever.”

Applause erupts again, taking Gale by surprise. He’s forced to stand there, taking it in as an entire room of VIPs expresses their love for the both of them. It makes his throat close up, and he blinks back unexpected tears as Bucky grins back at him from the base of the stage. He’d heard Gale practice this speech a dozen times, but this part was new, something Gale decided to slip in while he was standing there with Chick. Eyes shining, Bucky mouths the words “I love you.” 

Beside him, Curt slaps him on the back and lets out a whoop, and the cheers get louder. 

After a few moments, Gale swallows, gathering his composure, and he nods at his audience. “Yeah, so… thank you for that,” he chuckles, his voice thick. He blinks again, shaking his head to clear it as the noise begins to die down.

“But anyway, I couldn’t be more proud to be the commander of this landmark mission. The crew and I carry with us a deep gratitude for all of the intrepid explorers who came before us, who laid the groundwork. Truly we stand on the shoulders of giants, present company included…”

The rest of the speech Gale recites as prepared, the usual stuff about NASA’s goals, the paraphrased plan for the mission, its contributions to science, the beauty of space, and so on and so forth. It rolls off the tongue smooth and easy, and he’s about to start wrapping it up when the unexpected happens. As if this night wasn’t already hard enough.

With one glance, Gale’s world tilts on its axis, his heart dropping to the floor with a thud that he wonders if anyone else can hear.

In the back of the room, the crowd shifts just so, and Gale catches sight of a dark-haired man with scruffy salt-and-pepper facial hair and an old worn suit. He’s lingering near the back wall of the ballroom, unassuming and yet so obviously out of place. Or maybe only Gale realizes how out of place he is.

Their eyes meet, so far across the sea of people that no one else can see it. No one has a single clue, but it makes Gale’s tongue turn thick, making him stumble over his words just for a moment.

“I, uh…” He smiles anyway, trying to act like everything is fine. He rips his eyes away from the man’s, focusing hard to keep himself steady and bring this speech to a graceful close. “I hope when you go home tonight, you can look up at the stars, and dream about what’s possible.” 

In the back of the room, there’s faint movement near the wall. He refuses to look, trying instead to make every member of this audience feel like he’s talking to them on a personal level, trying to make this mission mean something to each of them

“And when you look at the moon during the weeks after the Artemis 4 launch,” he continues, “wave to us up there, okay? We’ll be waving back.”

The room erupts into one last raucous ovation as Gale places the microphone back on its stand, and he flashes a winning grin. Cameras click, the few news agencies allowed into the ballroom searching for the perfect shot. As Gale waves to the crowd, his heart stutters in his chest. His eyes scan across the back of the room.

He looks and looks, squinting against the camera flashes as he searches among the throng of men in suits and ties. But none of them are the right suit. None of them are the right man.

At the far end of the ballroom, a door gently slips closed.

He stands in the light of the morning sun, dressed in a NASA flight suit decorated with mission patches, walking away from the place where he grew up for the second time in his life. He looks to the sky, head high, shoulders back, nothing in his way. 

A little boy comes up to them at the Casper airport, a shy little thing with shaggy blonde hair and bright blue eyes. His mother nudges him forward and waits with a kind smile, watching her son come face to face with the person he wants to grow up to be. He can’t be more than six or seven, Bucky thinks. He asks them if they’re really astronauts. 

Gale, taken by surprise, takes off his sunglasses and kneels down to the kid’s level. 

“Sure are,” he says. Then he points over to Bucky. “This guy here even went to the moon.” 

Bucky laughs and stands with his hand on Gale’s shoulder. “Well this guy is about to go there, too.”

Gale could’ve been anyone, but he became the kind of person who kids look up to, who they want to be someday. Sure, Bucky’s found himself there, too, somehow. But Gale… Gale is the one that they should admire. Gale is the one who deserves it the most. 

Bucky watches his husband with this little boy, this spitting image of who he once must have been. He even has a little toy plane in his pocket, which he takes out to show them oh so proudly. Gale smiles at him, talks to him, holds the toy plane and asks him about it, lets him touch the patches on his shoulders and chest. He explains what each of them mean, why each one is important.

And all Bucky can think is that this is the man he married a year ago, and he’s perfect. 

He watches Gale pull an Artemis challenge coin out of his bag, handing it to the little boy and explaining it in the same way they explained it to Maggie. The kid takes it, eyes bright with awe. He clutches it to his chest. Someday, he’ll look at the coin, and he’ll remember the man who gave it to him just weeks before landing on the moon. 

“You can be anything you wanna be,” Gale tells him. “Remember that. The sky can be yours. You just have to reach for it.”

Right there, lit by the sun like an angel walking this earth, is the man Bucky fell in love with, and he wonders if he’s really talking to the boy, or if he’s saying it to some younger version of himself. 

You can be anything you wanna be. You just have to reach for it. 

In the end, Bucky supposes, Buck Cleven chose to be someone good. 

—

The next couple weeks pass by in a blur. They train nonstop, what feels like every waking moment. Every single aspect of the mission, pushing and pushing until they feel like they’ve got it right. The few moments when they come up for air, the crew is putting on smiles for interviews with the media or studying up on the experiments they need to conduct on the mission, meeting with science specialists and engineers and NASA suits. Morning to night, at the Center, falling into bed and straight to sleep with hardly a word. 

It takes a few days, but Gale seems to have moved on from the visit to Casper. The grind leading up to launch can do that. At the very least, he’s shoving it down where he can’t let it interfere with the mission. Bucky’s tried to talk to him about it a handful of times, in the precious moments of quiet they have. But Gale brushes it off or tells Bucky that he's fine, that he doesn’t need to talk about it, that they have too much to do to worry about things like that. So Bucky just has to let it go, too.

It’s like he and Gale got that one final night under the stars, one surreal moment away from it all, and now they’re back in full force. It’s worth it, though. It reminds Bucky that this is what Gale loves, just as much as he does. He knows that all of the grueling days are worth it, when he sees the pure glee on Gale’s face, looking up at the stars or walking out of a successful sim or telling an interviewer about the mission and how excited he is for it. 

There’s this one day where the Today Show comes in to film a piece to air right before the launch. They get some footage of the crew training in the sim, Bucky – notably back to work after his accident – diligently monitoring them. Then Gale and Macon take Al Roker through the Gateway modules, explaining how the lunar station will work, the process of getting it set up for future missions, and the experiments they’ll do on it. It’s just like so many other media pieces they do – National Geographic and Discovery Channel and CNN.

At some point that day, Gale is doing an interview with Al, set up in the SVMF with the Orion mock up behind him, when Bucky wanders past again, on his way to Gateway training with the backup crew. There’s a camera close up on Gale, but he looks completely relaxed, the all American pilot in his NASA flightsuit. He’s talking about the damn universe again, like he’s one to do, and he has that genuine look of awe on his face that always seems to draw people in and make them believe what he’s saying, make them want to listen, make them want to keep supporting this endeavor of theirs. It’s exactly why the world fell in love with him. 

“It’s amazing, really, that you and I are sitting here right now, talking about flying to the moon,” he says to Al. It’s his favorite thing to say to reporters, and it never fails to charm them. “So many things had to go right, over billions of years, for us to land right here, but we did. I think we’re real lucky to walk this Earth. We look up at those stars, and we see our past and our future, and we just want to know more about them. It’s the same with the moon.”

“How so?” Al asks, a wistful smile on his own face.

Gale’s lips curve into that charming little half smile. “Well, humanity has been fascinated by the moon for as long as we could look up at the sky and see it lookin’ back. It’s the first thing we knew other than our own world, and come to find out, there’s so much we can learn from it, about our planet and our solar system. It tells a whole story that we just have to know how to read…”

He starts to trail off when he spots Bucky, his eyes falling onto him, and his expression shifts from one kind of happiness to another. He forces the rest of his thought out, but he also reaches a hand out to the side. Al turns to see Bucky, and Bucky really doesn’t know if this is allowed, but he goes to his husband anyway. Because Gale asked him to. 

“Hey there flyboy,” he says just as he enters the camera shot. He wraps his arms around Gale from behind, kisses him on the cheek. It makes Gale laugh as he grabs onto Bucky’s arm. 

“Major Egan,” Al greets, more for the camera than for anything else. “You’re looking good, almost a year after Artemis 3.”

“I’m glad to be back here, Al,” Bucky says, simple.

Thankfully, there’s certain reporters he can usually trust not to turn a story on him, and they’re here to talk about Artemis 4. Not him. Al smoothly moves the interview forward, even if Bucky’s made him improvise. “You’ve been a big part of Artemis 4’s training this year. How does it feel getting your own husband ready to fill your shoes as commander?”

Bucky looks at Gale, and Gale looks right back at him. Bucky isn’t lying when he says, “Gale is the best of us. He’ll make us all proud.”

He doesn’t expect his interview-crashing to make it into the final piece, but it will. It’ll be everywhere, come launch day. Everything from ‘hey there flyboy,’ to that look they share. After all, they’re one of the biggest stories in the world, and that look says everything – starcrossed lovers in a new age, on a new frontier. To hell and back. To the moon and back. 

It’s a look that says I’m here with you, I love you, I will come home to you, and that’s all that matters in the end.

—

October 31, 2026 Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

Gale’s eyes are locked on the sim screen as he maintains their trajectory, easing the docking probe on Orion into the drogue on I-Hab. He’s done this countless times by now, ensuring he can manually perform this maneuver if necessary, but there’s nothing like hours and hours of practice to make sure he could do it even if he was nearly incapacitated. “Alright, and we have… docked.”

He waits for the latches to take hold, signifying capture.

“You sure?” Benny asks.

“We’re not seeing it here, Four,” Bucky says over coms.

Gale furrows his brow. “No. I’m backing out and trying again.” Another failure. “Houston, I can’t seem to get a latch on I-Hab.”

Macon: “Go at it faster.”

Benny: “That’s what she said.”

Sandra: “Shut it, Demarco.”

Gale: “...Still no capture.”

Bucky: “Stand by.”

Benny: “...Are we actually standing by? Is there a problem with the sim?”

Bucky: “No, Demarco. Work the problem.”

Gale finds the dripping sass both unnecessary and unhelpful. They’ve been in this thing for too long, trying to dock with Gateway, and Bucky is honestly almost as much of a hardass about training as Gale was for Artemis 3 (key word: almost). He seems to get joy out of throwing difficult scenarios at them, not that Gale can blame him. He’s certain there were moments where Artemis 3 wanted to strangle him, too.

Sandra: “Bucky’s being ornery.”

Macon: “You did that beautifully, Gale. Would’ve been perfect.”

Gale: “That’s a nice sentiment, but do you have anything constructive to add?”

Macon: “That’s a negative, commander.”

Gale: “Well someone better figure it out before Major Egan leaves us stranded in orbit.”

Bucky: “I would never, angel.”

Gale: “Hours of sim records say otherwise.”

Benny: “You’re the one who married him.”

Gale rolls his eyes, keeping his hand locked on the command module controls. He’s never been sure if it’s better or worse to try to separate Bucky Egan, his CAPCOM, from John Egan, his husband, but sometimes he finds himself doing it anyway. If nothing else, it helps him keep the frustration in the sim instead of taking it home.

It only sometimes works.

Gale: “Macon, verify the docking probe circuit breakers.”

Macon: “Verified. We have power.”

Gale: “Well shit. Who has other ideas?”

Gale originally set out trying to get this docking maneuver done using as little fuel as possible, but after a third failed attempt, even with maintaining thrust to give the latches more of a chance, he’ll take any success at all.

They spend quite a long time in their last sim of the day, which was supposed to be quick and easy, checking the probe’s electrical connections and verifying power on different command module systems. The crew is supposed to react to these scenarios as if they were actually happening on a real mission, but damn it, they cannot figure out what the hell Bucky changed in the sim to screw them over. They can’t find anything amiss with the power, no matter how many times they double and triple check. And eventually, they decide that that pretty much leaves one option: a mechanical issue. The latches are cocked, but they’re not releasing when the module makes contact.

They’re in the middle of debating a last-resort plan to do an unplanned EVA and retrieve the drogue for inspection when it hits Gale. During the actual mission, manually extracting the drogue would be an extremely inconvenient maneuver, requiring the entire crew to suit up and open the hatch for Benny or Macon to complete a spacewalk that was not factored into the mission plan or the spacecraft’s lifespan. There’s no telling how long it would take, whether it would be successful, or what other unknowns it might cause. 

And that sounds really fucking familiar.

“Alright John,” Gale says. “I think I see what you’re playing at. I’m gonna go again, use the probe for alignment. Demarco, while I hold a plus-X to keep us there, you blow a bottle and try to retract the probe, get it outta the way. We’ll see if we can get any of those latches.”

Benny: “Will that work?”

Gale: “Maybe.”

The rest of the world probably doesn’t want to know just how much of space travel is built on maybe. But more often than not, maybe tends to come through.

Gale’s plan works, in any case. He uses the probe to align the command module with I-Hab, maintaining positive thrust to keep them in position, and Benny blows one of their nitrogen bottles to force the probe to retract. When they have confirmation that the latches are engaged, Macon and Benny high five, but Gale just kind of scoffs. He checks the clock. They’re nearly an hour over time, and he really should’ve figured this out sooner.

When he finally climbs out of the mock-up and strides over to the control center, he puts himself right in front of Bucky, who is still jotting down notes about the session. “You Apollo 14’d me.”

Bucky looks up and smirks at him, no doubt knowing exactly how frustrated Gale is about it. “You know, you’re supposed to know more about NASA history than anyone here. I expected you to figure that out sooner.”

Gale scowls, and Bucky kisses him on the cheek. Then he draws him in for a peck on the lips, trying to break him out of his sulking. It almost works, until Bucky reaches down to grab something out of his bag. “Buck up, Cap. We’re late.”

He presses a blue plastic-y object against Gale’s chest, and Gale grabs it from him. When he realizes what it is, he sighs. The Halloween party. “I’m not wearing the cowl, John.”

“Oh yes you are.”

—

Gale complains the whole time they’re changing into their costumes and again when they make it to the party, where it seems all of JSC has already arrived except for the Artemis 3 and 4 crews. He makes it sound like they stumbled into the Hundred Proof egregiously late all because Bucky pushed the crew a little harder on their last sim of the day. Bucky disagrees. Sure, maybe they should’ve gotten here more than 30 minutes ago, but when they show up fashionably late, they certainly aren’t stumbling. They walk through the doors side by side like fucking badasses, and everyone turns to watch them. Bucky has a cape drifting in his wake, and yeah, he feels like a fucking superhero.

At first it’s a little peculiar. Superman and Captain America. They’re not from the same universe, people might complain. Why didn’t they do a more couple-y couples costume, like Batman and Superman or Captain America and the Winter Soldier? Hell, Bucky’s name is even Bucky.

But then the rest of the Artemis 3 and 4 crews waltz in behind them with all the subtlety of, well, a bunch of overenthusiastic superheroes. Someone might as well be blowing a fan and filming them in slow motion with the way all eyes are on them.

On one side is Artemis 3, the Justice League. Bucky is suited up in a Superman suit that he is, perhaps, a little too proud of. Following close behind, Curt comes in as Batman, scowling at everyone. Then there’s Alex as the Flash, and Rosie as Green Lantern to complete the ensemble.

On the other side, Gale leads the Artemis 4 Avengers as Captain America. He gave in to Bucky’s pleading – see: rolled his eyes and did what his husband asked – and is wearing the cowl, though Bucky doesn’t expect it to stay on for long. On the plus side, Marge helped him devise a way to strap a shield to his back, and Bucky knows that Gale is kind of pleased about how well it turned out. He’s joined by Sandra, looking like she could fuck someone up as Black Widow. Bringing up the rear is Macon as Black Panther, and Benny as Thor, swinging a fake hammer around in a surprisingly coordinated manner.

…Until he knocks over someone’s glass, and Gale – a true hero – catches it mid-air before it hits the ground.

Bucky is perfectly fine letting everyone in this bar think that the superhero idea originated with efforts to come up with team costumes. They don’t have to know what really happened, which is that Bucky was jealous of the new Superman. 

That’s what Gale says, at least.

The original plan was for Sandra to dress up as Barbie, and for the men of both Artemis crews to dress up as different versions of Ken. They were going to have signs that said “This Ken’s job is…” followed by something stupid that the others would decide. “This Ken’s job is complaining,” “This Ken’s job is doing math so we don’t have to,” “This Ken’s job is dancing on tables,” “This Ken’s job is silently judging you,” “This Ken’s job is making sure the other Ken’s don’t die.”

Bucky was a fan of his sign saying “This Ken’s job is almost dying that one time,” but Gale vetoed it, and no one was too intent on pushing Gale Cleven on a joke about his husband kicking the bucket, including his husband.

That whole thing went by the wayside anyway, about a month ago, though Bucky is hoping they’ll revive it for next year. He and Gale were watching the 2025 Superman on a rare night that they were both home early enough for a movie, and about halfway through, Bucky could no longer ignore the way Gale had been staring at the new Clark Kent, pretty much since the very first scene. 

Gale Cleven doesn’t often thirst over guys who aren’t Bucky. But there he was, fantasizing about Superman even though Bucky was sitting right beside him. 

“He’s cute, John. What do you want me to say?” Gale laughed when he pointed it out. Gale would say that Bucky was pouting, but Bucky won’t admit to that, because he was totally not jealous. Not at all. 

Bucky’s never been jealous in his life, some might say. No shot. What a silly thing to accuse him of.

“Oh come on, darling,” Gale said, pausing the movie. Abandoning his new crush, he shifted over on the couch to sit right in Bucky’s lap, hands on his shoulders. “You know I already found my Superman.”

And no, that didn’t make Bucky feel any sort of way at all. At all. But long story short, that was the moment the new costume idea was set into motion. Bucky would dress up as Superman, just to remind Gale of who he should be staring at. Gale, meanwhile, would dress up as Captain America at Bucky’s request. 

“They’re from different franchises,” Gale complained. Bucky didn’t care. If Gale was getting his little fantasy, then Bucky wanted to get his, too. He wanted to see his husband looking hot in the Captain America suit, fulfilling all of his childhood dreams.

So, this was the solution. Artemis 4 as the Avengers, and Artemis 3 as the Justice League.

The crews fold themselves right into the party, grabbing drinks and getting started with the typical questionable decisions. The bar is packed and loud, with an eclectic mix of music over the speakers and people dancing or playing pool or shouting to be heard over the crowd. Bucky’s a little disoriented the moment they walk in, and he’s worried all of it might trigger a headache. It’s not lost on him that, apparently, a lingering side effect of Shackleton is that he’s temporarily lost his endurance for partying. Like he’s old now or some shit.

How boring.

But he’s almost certain that Gale won’t want to hang out for too long anyway, so he decides just to have some fun and have a drink. 

By the time he makes his way over to the bar, leaving Gale to go mingle, Curt is already flirting with Jackie, an empty shot glass in front of him. “You’re gonna have to forget about me, Biddick,” Jackie says with a teasing grin. She gives him another shot and tells him to go be an idiot somewhere else.

He throws back the shot and grins right back. “How could I ever forget about you?” 

He tends to come on to her every once in a while, and Bucky can no longer tell if it’s legitimate or if it’s just a long-standing joke between them. By the end of the night, he’ll probably have made out with one of the guys in engineering and charmed one of the new girls in admin anyway. At minimum. 

“Superman!” Curt exclaims when he sees Bucky come up beside him. He wraps an arm around his shoulder and leans in. “Get a drink. Then it’s you and me against Rosie and Alex. Darts, okay?”

“That never ends well,” Bucky chuckles. Jackie also has candy bowls scattered around the place for Halloween, including a couple at the bar. He reaches into one for a Twix, tearing the wrapper off. 

Curt snags the chocolate from Bucky’s hand and takes a bite before giving it back. “For us or for everyone else?”

“Definitely for everyone else,” Jackie butts in. But she won’t stop them. At least, not yet. Eventually, they’ll do something stupid and she’ll have to put the darts behind the counter for the night, but said night is still young. She slides a drink across the bar top to Bucky, even though he didn’t order anything.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“Halloween special.” And that’s all the information he gets, apparently. He polishes off the chocolate and takes a sip. It tastes good, whatever the fuck it is. 

By the time he extracts himself from the chaos of his own crew, he’s up two games and almost done with his second glass. He decides to leave while he’s ahead – to Curt’s dismay – to go socialize, or maybe find somewhere to sit down. The headache he was afraid of is starting to come on quick, nagging at the back of his skull.

He’s laughing, waving off his friends’ attempts to go another round, when a flash of light from a camera somewhere nearby makes his ears ring. 

He blinks, feeling a little unsteady as his vision gets darker around the edges, but he waves away his crew to go keep making fools of themselves and starts making his way through the crowd. It feels louder than before, and he feels too warm, sweat pricking his skin beneath the Superman suit. 

Another flash has him closing his eyes.

He can feel his heartbeat. It’s pounding in his head, hammering in his chest. Behind closed eyelids he sees chaos around him, tumbling end over end over end…

He blinks.

“You okay, man?” someone asks, putting a steadying hand on Bucky’s shoulder. One of the flight controllers. 

Bucky nods, pats the guy on the back as he brushes by with a quick “yeah, thanks” and something about too much to drink. It’s bullshit, but it’s believable. 

He focuses on breathing, long and deep, as he wades through the crowd. He fidgets with his cape to keep his hands from shaking, and he tosses an easy smile to a few people as he brushes by, exchanging compliments on their halloween costumes.

It grounds him, reminding him of where he is… and where he isn’t. Little by little, his heart rate starts to slow back to normal, or something resembling it.

After what feels like far too long of a journey, he finds Marge by the pool table, leaning back against the window with a drink in hand. She’s dressed like a witch, with a hat, black dress, fishnets, and tall black boots. She looks fucking hot, and Bucky hopes Benny tells her that at some point tonight. In any case, he takes it upon himself to make sure she knows.

“Fuck, Marge, you’re setting this place on fire.”

She laughs and reaches out a hand. He takes it and kisses it dramatically before leaning back against the wall beside her. “Ain’t too bad yourself, Superman,” she says, looking him up and down.

Over here in the back of the bar, where there’s a cool draft from the window and less of a crowd, Bucky feels like he can think straight again, and he takes some time to simply exist quietly beside his friend. He rolls out his neck and rests his head back against the chilled window glass. For her credit, Marge doesn’t fuss over him, even though Bucky’s certain she can tell he’s working through something. Instead, she just grabs him a glass of water, and then she talks, catches him up on all the gossip she’s learned tonight. 

From here, they have an excellent view of almost everything happening in the whole bar. Rosie has started up a billiards game with Macon. Croz is dancing with Sandra somewhere in the middle of the crowd – for old times’ sake. People are drinking and doing shots and laughing at bad jokes all around them, putting the pressure of their jobs out of mind for a night. 

Since Bucky’s departure, there's been an increasingly drunk game of darts involving a rotating cast of crew members and flight controllers. He wonders if the relationship between number of drinks consumed and number of darts that miss the board is linear or exponential. Either way, it will get the darts confiscated by Jackie at any moment now. 

Meanwhile, Curt, in true fashion, is dancing on a table, using the hammer from Benny’s costume as a microphone to sing along to Check Yes, Juliet. As Bucky expected, he has a guy up there with him, and they’ll no doubt be making out by the end of the song.

“I see you found your Captain America,” Marge observes, bringing Bucky’s attention back to their conversation.

He follows her gaze across the room to Gale, leaning against the bar and laughing about something with Helen and Benny. There’s an empty glass beside him, along with a few candy wrappers. The cowl, meanwhile, has been discarded and forgotten somewhere around here, leaving his hair half-gelled back and a little messy, but he looks damn good in that suit.

America’s ass, Bucky thinks to himself. It makes him giggle, but that might also be the alcohol.

“I guess I did,” he muses. He nearly forgot he told Marge about his little childhood crush, earlier this year when he was still essentially immobile and she was keeping him company one evening. He glances over when he feels her eyes on him, and she’s giving him this all-knowing, sisterly type of look that means she’s been blessed with some truth about the universe. “What?” he asks.

Marge tilts her head at him fondly. With a gentle smile, she rubs a hand over his shoulder, taking in his costume, and tugs at the fabric of his cape. Motioning her head toward Gale, she adds, “He found his Superman.”

Bucky doesn’t know if it’s the drinks or the dizzy chaos of a crowded party or just a really, really long year, but that makes his stomach flutter in a weird way. John Egan has never been particularly humble. He’s always liked the idea of being a hero, someone who did amazing things, someone who people could look up to. And he made it, even if he’s not sure how or if he deserves it. But it’s different, being that for an amorphous public, and being told you are that for one single, special person. 

It’s not like he isn’t aware of how much he and Gale have always done for each other, but he’s never thought about it like that. And with everything since Artemis 3… sometimes he can’t help but feel guilty for how much he’s been draining his own husband. “Yeah?” he asks, weirdly self-conscious all of a sudden.

Marge nods. “Yeah.”

A few minutes later, Bucky’s still thinking about that when Gale finds them by the pool table. “I forgot my laptop at the Center,” he complains, grabbing Bucky’s hand and standing in front of him like he’s waiting for him to solve this problem somehow. 

Bucky doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do about that, but he takes a sip from his glass of water and squints at his husband. They’ve been here for a long time now, and he’s showing none of the usual signs of being tired of the socialization or the antics of their friends. His cheeks are a little pink, his eyes bright. 

“Are you tipsy?” Bucky asks, his voice so shocked that it nearly makes Marge spit out her drink laughing. Gale just shrugs. Bucky can barely remember the last time he saw his husband have more than a single drink. “Benny convinced you to have whatever Jackie’s making over there, huh?”

“Just a little.” Gale shrugs again and leans some of his weight against Bucky. “Why not?”

Bucky wraps a protective arm around Gale and cranes his head over the crowd, spotting Benny with one of the drinks in question. “Demarco! Stop stripping my wife of his innocence!”

Benny flips him off, yelling back, “I’m pretty sure you did it first!”

Bucky ignores him and turns back to Marge, motioning to Gale. “How often does Buck Cleven get tipsy?” It’s not unheard of. After all, he hasn’t made it to drunk – now that, people would pay to see. But it’s not often that golden boy Buck Cleven joins them mere mortals for this most human experience. 

Marge chuckles. She should know; she’s known him longer than anyone. “Could definitely count it on two hands.”

Gale nods in agreement as he brushes his fingers over the single perfect curl hanging over Bucky’s forehead, completely enamored with it. “One and a half.”

Bucky stares at him. “You fucking boyscout.” He would find that kind of annoying with most people, all holier-than-thou and all that. But with Gale it’s just endearing. 

Gale gives him a reprimanding sort of look, and his fingers move down to rub over the red fabric of Bucky’s cape. “Hate to break it to you, Superman,” he says, pressing a hand against Bucky’s chest and leaning in for a kiss. “For tonight, people call you a boyscout, too.”

“New ship unlocked,” Marge quips beside them. She downs the rest of her drink and sets the glass on the side of the pool table, to Rosie’s dismay. Bucky kisses Gale again, letting himself forget about the headache and the noise. There’s a flash as someone, somewhere, takes a picture of Captain America and Superman in the back of a bar. It might be Marge, or Rosie, or any number of their friends, but Bucky doesn’t really care. His ears aren’t ringing anymore, and he can taste the alcohol on Gale’s lips. It’s not a usual experience, but it’s not a bad one, either. 

“SuperCap?” Marge wonders. “Super America? Captain Kent?”

Distantly, Bucky hears Macon say “I vote SuperCap” as he strikes the cue ball. 

Finally, Bucky pulls away, opting to ignore the teasing around them. “So you left your laptop in your office?” He asks. “Can’t you get it tomorrow?”

Gale shakes his head. “Not goin’ to the Center tomorrow. Offsite training.”

“Stop by for it.”

“No. I wanna get it tonight.”

Bucky sighs. “Well then one of us better sober the fuck up.”

For once, turns out, that person is Bucky. He’s not sure how in hell that happened, but eventually they manage to slip out of the Hundred Proof, and he drives them the short distance back to JSC. 

It’s not often that they’re here when it’s nearly deserted. The entire Artemis team, at least, is at the bar, where they’ll stay until probably far too late. Across the quad from their office building, the Mission Control Center will be the most lively building on campus right now, with a group of flight controllers always on shift for the ISS. But the astronaut offices are empty.

As they wander inside, Gale grabs Bucky’s hand, dragging him along. They run through the halls, giggling like kids who broke in somewhere they’re not supposed to be. Bucky can’t help but think about the stories these walls could tell. They’ve seen greatness and heartbreak, stupidity and tomfoolery, generations of men and women taking strides toward greatness. 

In the grand scheme of their lives, NASA has only been a fraction of it. But for Bucky, he knows it was always where he was meant to be. This building, this campus, this city was always where he was meant to be. And for all Gale’s hesitation about giving it a shot so many years ago, in the end, he’s turned into this quintessential American astronaut.

He waxes poetic about the universe on live TV, and people lean in to listen. They fawn over him wherever he goes, let him charm them with that easy drawl and winning smile. He’s one of the best astronauts they have, made for the job through and through. 

People look to them for inspiration, for guiding words on space travel and the future of humanity. Kids hang pictures of them on their bedroom walls, dreaming of walking on the moon one day. People root for them. People hope for them. People cry with them and celebrate with them. 

JSC may only be the latest phase in their lives, but Bucky has never had a doubt that it’s where they belong. 

He can just look at these walls, at the photos of missions past, candids and portraits of astronauts, memorabilia from every phase of the space program from Mercury to Artemis, and he knows that it’s not just a job. It’s their home. 

There’s even a few scattered photos of John and Gale, because they’ve become engrained in this sacred family, too. There’s Gale floating upside down in the Space Station cupola with the curve of the Earth behind him. John in his EVA suit, standing on the moon next to Starship. Gale and Helen in the cockpit of a T-38. The Artemis 3 crew, laughing about something as they walk out of the crew quarters the morning of launch.

Bucky stops in front of the picture of Gale on the ISS, tugging back on his husband’s hand. “This is one of my favorite pictures of you.”

Gale looks at the photograph for a moment. “Seems like every picture of me is your favorite picture of me.”

“That’s ‘cause they are,” Bucky laughs.

“Then they ain’t really your favorite,” Gale argues.

Bucky grins and turns toward Gale. “If I say they’re all my favorite,” he says, “then they’re all my favorite.” 

“Is that right?” Gale asks, looking at Bucky with something akin to amusement on his face. 

Bucky smiles, lifting a hand to brush his fingers over Gale’s cheek. He nods. “That’s right.”

What Bucky doesn’t expect is firm, strong hands to find their way to his chest, pushing him back against the wall, soft lips on his. His head is right beside the photograph, and for just a moment he’s worried about knocking it down, but he closes his eyes and the thought is gone. There’s nothing but hands rubbing over his shoulders, Gale’s nose bumping against his. Bucky’s so taken aback that he doesn’t really know what to do, so he just kisses back, roughly wrapping his fingers in Gale’s hair.

Gale braces one hand against the wall beside Bucky and cups the side of his face with the other, holding him there. The taste of liquor is fading, but Bucky can still taste the sweet bitterness of it on Gale’s lips. It’s not like Gale to be so bold – not in a public place – and Bucky’s pleasantly surprised by it. There’s just something about the quiet isolation of the Center at night. 

“All of them?” Gale asks when he eventually pulls away, leaving that damned hand against the wall right by Bucky’s head. It makes Bucky feel drunk even though he isn’t, his heart beating fast.

“All of them,” he insists. “Because they’re all you.” And he really does mean that.

Gale’s biting his lower lip, staring at Bucky like he doesn’t know what to do but he wants to do all of it, whatever it is. There’s cameras in the hallways, though, and they really don’t need security seeing whatever’s about to happen.

“Come on,” Bucky says. He takes Gale’s hand, and they run off down the hall once again. 

When they reach Gale’s office, Gale pulls him through the door and right back into a deep kiss, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s neck. “I thought we were here for your laptop,” Bucky whispers against his lips. 

“What’s the rush?”

Another kiss. Bucky chuckles, running his hands over the rough fabric of the Captain America costume, down to Gale’s hips. “None at all.” He fumbles around behind him to push the door closed, only for Gale to press him against it. “Someone’s feeling strong,” Bucky pants. “The suit’s goin’ to your head.”

“You like it,” Gale breathes, biting gently at Bucky’s bottom lip. He presses a kiss to the side of his mouth, moves down to his jaw. He presses closer and slips a hand beneath Bucky’s cape, trailing his fingers down to the base of his spine. Bucky’s trying to think of some retort, when a hand grabs his ass and makes him yelp, and that’s it… he needs to find some control here.

He pushes away from the door, coaxing Gale backward toward the desk in the middle of the room. He reaches around to push a few knickknacks to the side, and in one smooth motion that has him feeling like Superman after all, he lifts Gale off the ground and sets him right on top of the desk. Gale spreads his legs so his knees are bracketing Bucky’s hips, letting Bucky press close to him again.

“I like this look on you,” Gale says between kisses. He wraps up his fist in the fabric of the cape, his other arm draped over Bucky’s shoulder. He pulls back to look at him again, like he’s a painting he wants to memorize, and he nods. “I really like this look on you.”

“More than you like it on David Corenswet?” Bucky asks. He tries to pass it off as teasing, but a certain little bit of a growl in his throat gives him away as he presses a kiss to the base of Gale’s ear. 

“Oh darling,” Gale breathes, shaking his head. “That’s never been a question.”

Bucky smirks in satisfaction as he sets to work on Gale’s neck, nipping at sensitive skin. “Damn right,” he mutters. 

“So humble.”

Bucky would really, really like to mark Gale up a little bit, leave a nice little bruise, but he knows he won’t be too thrilled about that in the morning. So he goes gentle, and he doesn’t complain when Gale presses a hand to his cheek, guiding him back up to his mouth. 

“It’s unfair how perfect you look,” Bucky says in return. 

“Oh yeah?” Gale leans back on his hands to give Bucky a good view of him in the suit. He might not be any Chris Evans, but Bucky thinks he’s even better. Not to mention, he’s in better shape for Artemis than he’s been since they first entered the Air Force. “Does it live up to all your wildest dreams?”

Bucky would frown if he wasn’t so turned on by Captain fucking America seated on top of this desk and just asking him to do as he pleases. “Marge told you,” he deadpans. 

“Sure did,” Gale says, like a challenge, lifting his chin and giving Bucky this weirdly daring and seductive look that, Bucky hates to admit, works like a charm. 

He drags Gale back to him, yanking him forward so he’s right on the edge of the desk, their bodies pressed as close together as possible. It makes Gale gasp so prettily, and Bucky swallows it between his lips. He wants his hands all over Gale. He wants to feel every part of him. He wants to live in this heady feeling that comes with Gale’s fingers tangled in his hair, or clutching at his shoulder, or roaming over his chest and sides. The shape of Gale’s body moving against his is intoxicating, gentle teeth biting at his lip, warm breath on his cheek. Bucky’s face feels hot with the exhilaration.  

Turns out a superhero suit is not the most comfortable thing to have a hard-on in, but he’s overwhelmed with the need for more. More contact. More Gale. More everything. 

Then there’s soft lips on his neck, the sharp, sweet nip of teeth. Gale’s hand is on his ass again, pulling him close. Bucky’s thinking through the logistics of getting these damn suits off as he puts his hands under Gale’s legs and lifts him again, strong arms wrapped tight around his neck for support. 

But as he pulls Gale off the desk, a stack of papers slips off with him, fluttering to the office floor. “Fuck, sorry,” Bucky mutters, watching them land in a scattered mess around his feet.

Gale chuckles and rests his forehead against Bucky’s temple. “One day we’ll learn.”

“We can keep going,” Bucky suggests.

Gale shakes his head, squirming out of Bucky’s hold so he’s on his own two feet again. “I don’t know about you, but this get up is better removed in a more private space,” he says, motioning up and down at himself. Bucky can’t disagree. Would he have made do? Definitely. Would he rather do it in their bedroom? Also definitely. 

Squatting down, cape pooling on the floor around his feet, Bucky starts trying to gather up the papers. They’re mostly things like geology terminology reviews, Orion and Starship schematics, the Artemis training schedule, a couple sticky notes from Bucky. “What’d’ya say we get your laptop and head home?” he says as he straightens up the stack. 

He glances over at Gale, who’s on his knees on the floor beside him. But he’s staring straight down at a sticky note clutched between his fingertips. It’s not one that Bucky left. It’s the wrong color, and the handwriting is far too neat. More likely a note from one of the secretaries. 

“What’s that?” Bucky asks. 

“Uh…” Gale blinks down at it and shakes his head. “I don’t…” Bucky watches him clench his jaw uncomfortably, and then he just hands the note over. 

Bucky’s eyes go wide when he reads it, and all of the electricity that was just buzzing between them sizzles out. All he can think now is, fuck. 

There’s a phone number scrawled across the bottom. And above it: “10/31 4:30PM. Call from James Cleven.”

“Your dad,” Bucky whispers. 

Gale nods, shrugging half-heartedly like he has no idea how he’s supposed to feel about it. “My dad.”

...

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