“you sound like my dad, john”

At dinner, Benny says, "He doesn't look good."

"Nobody looks good in here," John counters. 

"Yeah, but—" Benny slurps at his stew with only a passing grimace. "He looks like he's gonna keel over any second. And he hasn't been eating anything. Maybe we should fetch someone, or at least check on him."

"We, huh," John echoes, because of course Benny doesn't truly mean we, he means John. 

Nobody else contributes to the conversation, other than the occasional sniffle or clearing of a throat. Their silence is obviously in agreement with Benny. John can't do much anymore but he can still read a goddamned room. Fat lot of good that's doing him now, as he glowers and finally shoves back from the table when Crank says, "He's sponging off in the latrines."

"Alright, alright, Jesus," he mutters. 

The sounds of dripping water are floating through the hallway. Before he can even step in, Gale's echoing voice says, "Not now, Bucky." 

John wonders if it's his footsteps that are identifiable, or if it's his smell. "Take it up with the rest of 'em, I'm the victim of a democratic vote," he says loudly, and turns the corner to see Gale sitting on a stool with his back turned to the door, shirtless, the waistband of his trousers dampened in splotches. There's an arcing bruise painted over his side. When he twists around, a darker blood blister reveals itself as well, fresh as the day it was put there by the sole of John's boot.

John looks at it, then looks up at Gale's face, alabaster in comparison to the colors on his ribs. The swelling on his own face has gone down for the most part. Probably would've gone down sooner if he hadn't kept poking at it. 

"I thought you healed fast," he says, thrown.

"Ain't got much in me to do the healing." Gale turns forward again and dips the sponge into the bucket. He swipes over his armpits and then around his neck, craning his chin out of the way. "You can tell the boys that I'm fine." 

When John doesn't move, Gale says it again: "Go on. Tell them," seemingly unwilling to actually make him do it. 

John crosses his arms. The splintered doorframe pokes into his back as he leans against it, watching Gale and his careful ministrations. Over his stomach, through his hair, between his fingers. He rinses off the sponge and repeats the order. Stomach, hair, fingers—and suddenly his spine curves from hunching into himself. The sponge squelches onto the tiles. 

"Bucky," he breathes. 

Whatever invisible string there is between them tightens enough for John to straighten. "Yeah, Buck." 

Gale just keeps breathing deep and measured, like he's in pain. You need me, John thinks, a little mean, a little relieved. 

"What do you need?" he says in fake ignorance. "You won't eat and you gave me hell for making you do it in your sleep. I haven't seen any rats around—think you took care of all of them last month. Maybe we could ask the Brits for their best stock."

He walks closer. Closer still, smart enough to be cautious about it. Close enough to get to Gale's side, where he sees that Gale isn't answering because he can't, because he's got the tips of his fingers shoved into his mouth and is gnawing on them hard enough to bleed. 

Reflexively, John grabs his wrist. He tugs, but Gale's bite is too strong, so he takes his jaw in his other hand and squeezes as rough as he can until it finally unlatches, freeing what looks like shredded meat and glimpses of bone. 

"Fuck," he whispers harshly. "What the fuck are you doing?"

In a haze, Gale mumbles, "Sorry," wiping his hand over a filthy trouser leg. John snatches it away. "I don't wanna hurt you," Gale says, and he's said that a thousand times before, but this time he adds, "Don't wanna help you hurt yourself."

That ire of rejection flares again. John grits out, "Too bad, Buck," and lets go of Gale's jaw to shove his wrist between his teeth 

Gale clamps down automatically, driven by the same deep-seated survival urge that keeps him locked in here. John's head tips back from a noiseless punch of vertigo. It's like jumping, the weightless feeling of his body in open air, falling faster than the fort above him. He drops to one knee, then the other, Gale's boot in between. 

"Easy. Easy now," John tells him. With effort, he takes control of his twitching thumb and turns it into a caress over that too sharp cheekbone. 

Gale settles, more obedient than he ever is outside of this. His eyes are shut. If he notices John inching forward to rub up against his leg, he doesn't say anything about it. "That's good," John encourages, ragged, humping his hips with his free hand wrapped around Gale's calf to hold it steady. "Gotta get some strength back in you. Need that to get outta here, right? It's simple, isn't it?"

Bit by bit Gale wipes him clean, everything ugly being swept away and replaced only with thrumming suction. He drops his forehead onto Gale's thigh. Keeps going even as the pace and volume of Gale's suckling slows, even as John feels his arm drop by gravity and Gale says, "Bucky."