“this you will be the one worth knowing”

🤕

John tells him 'go', in the immaterial of predawn dark, and nothing feels real anymore. Not the march. Not the shadowy side street that swallowed Aring and George in turn like a fairytale maw. Not John himself, even though his eyes are as hard as stones: there's only Gale. He feels like the only vital thing for miles, blood-hot and terrified, about take a gamble so stupid even his Pa would think twice.

So he goes, and then John's shout cuts through the air behind him, and it's just his mind, just the hallucinatory offspring of exhaustion and panic, but when Gale looks back it's like he's staring down the gun-muzzle of memory. Something he's forgotten and is just now remembering, or something he's revisited in anguish a thousand times, something important, something that will change him, unmake him: Bucky, wrestling a goon to the ground under the bar of his own gun.

And the thing is, he has seen it before. They've been enacting scenes like this between themselves since summer, in the scant hours between curfew and lights out. What do you do if the goon has a knife. What do you do if there's two of them. What do you do if this, if that, if when. They took it in turns to play the guards, arming themselves with ladles and chair legs, putting all they had into the performances. It wasn't like the real thing would go easy on them. Even still, none of them ever beat John. He was too big, too determined. He darted past them every time, maybe letting out a little yip of triumph on the way, if his spirits were up. Maybe that outcome could happen now, the next frame on the film reel. But Gale is trapped in the cold fear of this moment alone, and he can only act according to the scream of his heart.

It's hardly a reward when the second soldier materializes, but it fills Gale with relief that he turned back nonetheless. He's there to stop the rifle's descent. If they're going to be shot for this, stripped for their layers and left in a ditch, John's body will lie there purpled by one less bruise. He shoves into the man gracelessly, grappling for the gun, the same as John did for him moments before.

'What are you doing!?' John's yelling behind him, which is neither helpful nor subtle, but the guards are yelling too: their friends are already drawing in close like a noose. Gale feels their hands grab at him, hauling him back so that he goes sprawling into the dirt. There's no time to get up: he curls in on himself ahead of the blows, and hopes to heaven that John is still standing. This can't be a universe in which they both get kicked to death. God has to let one of them has to go out clean.

He huddles over to protect his belly the best he can, but he feels the boots hard at his back, his ribs and the soft ungirded flesh lower down, skin and fat and muscle and beneath those, his kidneys, his guts. The pain breaks his guard, cracks open the curl of his spine and they get him in the stomach after all, fracturing a few of his fingers along the way.

John is still yelling, but it sounds more angry than agonized, and it surges out into the air clear and unmuffled. He's on his feet, must be. Being restrained, no doubt, but they haven't laid him low. It's about the last thing Gale's able to think before someone snaps their foot into his skull, and his head is filled with such blinding pain there's no room for anything else.

When it clears some, Gale can still hear John's voice, and maybe it is agonized now after all, no longer demanding release or shouting insults at his captors, but instead calling desperately for Gale's attention. There's a new voice, though, tight with fury but controlled despite that, authoritative. Clark, Gale thinks hazily. The kicks stop coming. Gale's body loses some of its impossible tension. He moves his head a little to try and make out what's going on above him, panting mouth collecting the grit. The Lieutenant General is squaring up, shouting for Glemnitz, and in his failure to immediately appear he's wasting no time giving the goons orders in his stead. Senior officers, Gale makes out. Hell to pay. Bucky, where's Bucky? Gale's heavy eyes travel on restlessly and find him flanked by two men pinning his arms down, with another one behind holding a fistful of his coat. His face is pale, but unmarked.

Gale tries to get his hands under him, to push up from the ground. He's shoved back down again, and there's a fresh burst of expletives from Bucky's direction.

'What is happening here?' clips out a voice. The W is fricative.

Clark's response is immediate, too fast for Gale to follow, but between him and the newcomer there seems to be a peace negotiated. Gale's aware of the black boots retreating on all sides, as well as the thundering sound of someone skidding down next to him, touching his shoulder and lifting his face with a trembling hand.

'Buck. Buck. You all right? Fuck, can you stand?'

Gale isn't sure. He doesn't think they went for his legs, but the rest of him is on fire.

'If you help me,' he croaks out, and John nods before dutifully helping him into a sitting position. He doesn't do it with any particular force or urgency, but Gale's stomach lurches warningly. He's vomiting before he can even say anything, blurting bile humiliatingly down his front.

'Fuck,' John says again. 'I told you to go. You loony, why didn't you run?' He has Gale's puke on his sleeve, but this is what he's mad about.

It’s still hard to see the battered body curled in on itself, armor stripped and half naked without it, bound hands and feet, boot prints and lash marks. No one’s touched his face and that seems like another kind of insult. He’s handsome to the point of beauty, almost painfully so, never mind the sweat and blood and filth, but perfect bones, a sweet, bruised mouth, and clear, blank eyes, a blue like a sword or a picture.

John’s not going to say anything, even if those eyes are gonna haunt him, plenty will about this war. But then he realizes the man is still breathing and he swallows. Looks at Curt and shakes his head, “unless this poor son of a bitch personally fucked your sister, maybe you should leave him alone,” he says.

Curt only stares him right down, a returned head shake and a frown, “wasn’t any of us, Bucky. Found him like this.”

“Shit,” John hisses, kneeling down next to the prisoner. He doesn’t ask who did, then. If this is one of theirs who’d had his own people turn on him or some unknown enemy. He isn’t one of John’s, that’s all he knows for sure. He’d know him blindfolded if he ever saw him again.

He’s breathing, labored and shallow, pulse thready. Flinches at the touch on his wrist, shifts away, like John’s grip is something he can fight off. Those remarkable eyes twitch under pale lashes. He shoves back, bound bloody hands, and bared teeth, stained with gore and more blood.

“Hey,” John whispers to him, “hey now, breathe for me.” He has to duck the sharp snapping teeth, like a maddened horse. Catches him as gently as he can. “You’re alright, you’re alright.” He doesn’t know that.

“Just put the poor bastard out of his misery,” Jack Kidd kneels at John’s other side, sour and shaking his head. Curt over next to him makes a snapping motion with his hands, miming a neck.

John ignores them. The battered man doesn’t, blinking those eyes at Jack like he’d said something worth hearing. “Please,” he croaks, bound hands thrust in front of him, eyes huge, almost hopeful. “End it.”

And then one day, Gale's pushing through some lists or PT or even sliding out of a cockpit after a grueling flight keeping a fort steady and he just sits down and can't seem to figure out how to get up.

And John, of course, has been paying attention and trying to distract him, put food on his plate, trying to make him go to bed, etc, but it hasn't worked because Gale kind of brushes him aside even while he's laughing at his jokes and looking less pinched about everything. But naturally, Bucky's right there, right at Gale's elbow (even if he's supposed to be doing something else, what even is a reserve command pilot, Bucky??).

And he gets Gale by that same elbow, swings an arm around his shoulder and makes it look like maybe he isn't half carrying him off to the ever present jeep and driving off with him. He definitely wrangles up a pair of passes while Gale is too out of it and muzzy to understand what's happening.

He's like, "Buck, buddy, pal, I'm gonna put you in a dark room like a goddamn canary and see if that knocks you out." Even says it out loud because it's pretty obvious Gale's ears are ringing so bad he doesn't hear a word of it.

If this is a pre existing relationship au, he takes him to a room somewhere, bars the doors, covers the windows and puts him to bed with a very long careful blowjob that sucks whatever energy there is right out of Gale's battered body, wipes him down and covers him up.

If it's not he probably skips the blowjob and reads bedtime stories instead.

He gets the telegram when he's at base and is flying a requisitioned plane to Paris before the hours' out. They can't spare him for it, the plane neither, they need a pilot and he's the guy they need. And he doesn't give a shit. If they didn't want him to go, they wouldn't have sent word.

He barely sees a thing, doesn't stop until he's in a hospital ward, big and echoing, you can see where the swastika banners were hanging not too many months ago.  Doesn't stop until he has Gale Cleven in his sights, alive, thinner even than that boy he'd met in Texas, but he's breathing, steady and shallow, and if John could get close enough he'd be able to feel his pulse.

He's a sight.

Gale's cheeks are scarred, strangely even cuts, a symmetry John isn't sure what to make of. His head is shaved down to stubble, same as the color of it on his upper lips and cheeks. Getting rid of lice, something like that, John decides. It looks wrong. but he has the same eyes, just sunken, sleepless and dehydrated. He's swamped by someone's spare pajamas but he grins, cracked lipped, and says, "what the hell took you so long?" with real sincerity. And John thinks, if this is what the kinder, gentler prison camps did, he'd-- he would--

And John says, "sons of bitches," but Gale is looking at him funny, so he says, "that's what you get for being sentimental," while thinking, christ, what the hell did take him so long? 

And Gale laughs, really does, and offers hand, like they're being introduced and says, "well now I feel welcome, pal." His fingers are thin and bony, palm too chilled. John wants to put gloves on him, protect the bare skin.

Instead he lights a cigarette and Gale asks him about his flight of all things so he talks like that matters. Gale listens and he talks, sitting at the edge of a goddamned hospital bed.

He's got a flask that's more full than it's been this time of day in months-- more than a year-- since even before he had Buck Cleven in his sights again. He only takes a small sip, offers it to Gale, who waves it off but grins about it. 

Before they let him spring Gale the nurse takes him aside and talks to him very earnestly about caloric intake, like he couldn't have guessed, and then hands him some documents to bring to the doctors at base. "Major Cleven knows all this," she says, soft mouthed and earnest, "But I'm not so sure he's hearing it right."

When Gale had left around midday without a word, the door limply falling shut behind him like some sort of message John hadn’t had the ability to interpret, he’d been concerned but content to leave Gale be. When night had rolled around and Gale still wasn’t back, it had become impossible for John to suppress his manic energy. And now he’s jumping out of his skin to check every shadowed figure he comes across, hoping for a glimpse of Gale’s hair or familiar jacket.

John’s luck seems to hold this time because as he approaches finally, finally, he catches sight of Gale, and for a wild moment it feels like he’s looking in the mirror—sees the visage of a man that started something he couldn’t quite finish, an air of defeat reflected in downturned lips and a hangdog slump, familiar as an old friend. But that’s Gale's face, not his, and Gale isn’t supposed to look like that.

His features are all mottled purple and red, concentrated around his right eye, as if at least one solid shot had landed directly there. His head is tilted into the pole he’s propped against, like holding it up fully would take more energy than he’s got left.

Even under the yellow cast of the light, it’s clear the bruising is developed enough that this must have happened hours ago, and John wonders what he’d been doing when it had happened—washing dishes, listening to the radio? He should have looked sooner—wonders why Gale had gone out alone and ended up without John on his six.

John’s way too close by the time Gale finally notices him, and another jolt of concern stabs him in the chest. How out of it is he? His eyes, when they meet John’s, are an even more intense shade than usual, a starker contrast rimmed in red.

It’s strange to even imagine Gale in a physical fight, always much more likely to be goaded into some daring display of skill rather than throw a punch. But he hasn’t quite been Gale lately, and he’s also completely lost access to the ways he used to blow off steam. Maybe it isn’t so unexpected for this to be what Gale is seeking out, but John doesn’t have the first clue how to help him.

A thought buzzes around his head, as difficult to ignore as a mosquito and just as annoying—the undeniable proof that he doesn’t know Gale inside and out anymore, can’t predict his behavior. And maybe he never really could.

“Jesus, Buck,” he says, so softly it’s more of an exhale than anything else.

Gale doesn’t respond, just averts his eyes and slumps further into himself like curling up will make it so John can’t see.

Even if this is maybe what Gale was seeking out, and John does understand the impulse, it still infuriates him to see Gale like this. To know that someone has hurt him. It hurts John to see him like this, feral around the edges and suffering in a way John can’t fix. All he can really do is try to get him home in one piece.

John searches Gale’s face, examines his posture and hands, and then he realizes what he’s looking for. It feels like a punch straight to the gut. He’d been checking to see if Gale was drunk, and mercifully it doesn’t seem like he is because John’s not sure he could handle what that would say about Gale's state of mind. It still scares him that he’d thought to check, even subconsciously.

John crouches down in front of Gale, reaching out slowly, afraid Gale might flinch back, but thankfully at least one thing about him is normal tonight and he only leans into John’s hand when it cups the less injured side of his face. He’s still not making eye contact, but he does let the weight of his head drop into John’s palm, and John figures that’s as good as he’s going to get.

“C’mon, let’s get you home,” John says, and Gale looks at him long enough to nod before darting his eyes away again.

Gale’s not drunk, but he’s also not able to stand on his own without swaying when John pulls him upright. It’s yet another odd reversal of roles for John to throw his arm around Gale’s back to help him remain upright and guide him home. He wonders if this odd helplessness is something Gale had felt, dragging his drunk ass back to their barracks time and time again. If Gale had felt this much worry about John. John thinks he must have, and feels a belated sense of remorse for how alone that must have made Gale feel—seeing John’s face bruised by Curt’s right hook, watching him hungover and ready to fly in the morning.

John’s lost in thought, slowly dragging them both toward home when Gale finally breaks his silence.

“Sorry I dragged you out looking for me.” It’s quiet and gravelly, and he must sense something in the way John’s entire body tenses, because he follows it up with, "Thank you, John,” and tips his head into the crook of John’s neck. John doesn’t want to get into it, he’s too tired, so he just squeezes him back. Hopes Gale knows he’d always go looking for him.