which circle of hell is this?

Gale shuffles his feet and offers: "I think it might be easier if we stick with Gale. Gale Cleven. I'm here to see Bucky?" It comes out a question.

The man -- Buck, the real Buck -- crosses his arms, and his voice and face are far from welcoming when he says, "He's not here right now."

"So this is Bucky's place?" Gale asks.

Buck's eyes narrow as he inspects Gale from the top of his head to the tips of his boots. "Our place," he says firmly. "And he didn't say anyone was coming to visit." 

Our place echoes in in Gale's ears, a flush rising in his cheeks at the implication. "Uh, that's my mistake," Gale says after a too-long pause. "I was just passing through and thought we might be able to catch up." 

"Mmmhmm," Buck hums, eyes flicking to the duffel and then back to Gale with a raised eyebrow.

Gale swallows hard. "Maybe I'll catch him on the way back through," he says, as if he has anywhere else to go at all. 

"Sure," Buck says. "Probably best if you call ahead in that case."

"Right," Gale says, taking a step back before he registers the sound of a vehicle rumbling closer and closer until it pulls to a stop behind him. 

Gale can't quite bring himself to turn around, locked in a staring contest with the other Buck until a car door slams and footsteps falter on their way to the porch.

"Buck?" John says, and it's reflex to turn and face him. John's mouth hangs open, looking back and forth between Gale and the man he's living with. The man he named Gale after. 

Gale doesn't even know which one of them John's talking to. 

...

Gale doesn’t believe in angels—certainly not ones that walk on Earth, and certainly not ones that call themselves Bucky of all things—but Curt had put the suggestion of a guardian angel in his ear once, way back when Bucky didn’t have a name or a face, when he was just this feeling Gale would get sometimes when he was flying—stronger and more foreign than intuition—and for lack of anything else to call it, him, the title stuck.

The angel tells Gale his name the first time he’s solid enough to really be a he rather than an it. They’re flying back from Le Bourget, Judy-E teetering towards becoming a glider, engines 1 and 4 both shot to hell, a jam on engine 3, a fire in engine 2 and another back in the tail section. They’re much too far behind enemy lines to think of letting her go. The air rumbling with flak and the comms clouded with shouted checklists and Gale feels steady. Deep in his gut, down to his toes, his hands refuse to shake as his mind whirls through his options. A hand over his hand, a voice underneath his voice. Clarity, instinct, a pure kind of knowledge that this is the answer, this will get them home. An understanding built so deep that it appears natural. Inevitable. Genius.

But Gale knows there’s no such thing as genius. Or if there is, he’s never been one. He works and he studies and it all comes together, but it has never been this simple. It’s that unease and a memory, Curt’s voice, someone’s up there watching your back, Major, that keeps him from screaming as a pair of hands, weighty and real, appear on top of his own. Duncan is in his ear, yelling, “—nose down! We gotta get that fire out!” But Gale’s focus has been over his shoulder, working through the jam with De Los Santos, so he’s a half a second behind—stupid, human, deadly—when a burst of flak rips through the right side of the cockpit, severing Duncan’s hands at the wrist. It’s only the hands over his that keep Gale, full force and pressure, on the yoke. Pushing Judy-E into a sharp dive.

“The hell—” is all he gets out. The hair on his neck raises and he goes prey-still. A shape appears behind him, beside him, hands over hands turning to arms next to arms, face next to his face, like Gale’s sitting on its lap. A beaked nose, a thin mustache, large white teeth, laughing eyes. Gale stutters through a lungful of crisp ozone, sharp-metallic-warm, creeping back up his throat to lay heavy on his tongue.

“It’s just me, Gale, just Bucky, you got this.” He says it like they’re old friends. Pulling from a well of trust that doesn’t exist. They’re swimming through cloud break, murky white on all sides. The blood spewing from Duncan has slowed to a trickle, rhythmic in the sudden quiet. The fire in the no. 2 gasps once then smokes out, orange flickering to black. Gale can’t hear it spin back up through the cotton in his ears, but he watches the prop become blurred. In one smooth motion they pull back on the yoke, easing her back up, making sure she doesn’t roll too far to the right.

Bucky makes a frustrated sound in Gale’s ear, “C’mon, wake up!” And it’s unclear if he means Gale or the no. 3, but both of them unfreeze at the same time. The engine splutters thick black smoke once, twice, before starting up her normal purr, cheers of the crew almost covering the gentle hum. Gale’s grip relaxes on the yoke, his shoulders relaxing, and he turns his head to face his angel, nose to nose. He’s smiling, the corners of his eyes and mouth crinkled with it, and it does something odd to Gale’s head. A weightlessness, the rush of relief from muscles untensed, ears freshly popped. He’s beautiful. Boyish and lively, unfazed by the blood that coats half his face.

The angel winks and disappears. Gale gets his boys home, the soft press of sheepskin never fading from his cheek.

---

Gale checked the duty roster. Read and reread the reports to interrogation. No mention of a Bucky. No mysterious 11th crew member slipped by unseen. No mention of Gale talking to himself either, which should be a relief. At least if he’s losing it, he’s keeping it to himself. Instead, a swift dread runs through him. Losing it would be easier. Shameful, but mappable. Figuring out where you are is the first step for getting yourself out.

Gale has no idea where he is. He has no choice but to sink deeper.

---

As if a dam had broke, Bucky’s with him for nearly every mission now. Not always fully present. Sometimes he’s just a flutter in Gale’s chest. A firm pressure around his wrist. A whisper of wind past his ear. He finds himself waiting for it. When he goes up with Demarco and Our Baby and they have to turn back for a mechanical failure, he’s disappointed at the lack of company.

All their aircraft make it back that day. Still, they’re not without losses.

Gale watches from hardstand 17 as the medics whizz by. The clamor of reentry fills the countryside. Screaming, sirens, shouted orders. The crew trucks bound for interrogation pass, haunted faces Gale won’t look away from. The air quivers, and Bucky’s arm slides around his shoulders.

Gale can’t remember when keeping company had turned to more. When his eyes had first wandered to Bucky’s lips. When he began anticipating Bucky’s weight against him for the response it would stir, rather than the solid comfort of his guidance. When, exactly, he’d decided that having more of Bucky would be worth forsaking everything else.

He has no idea what drives Bucky to this either. Why Gale would be worth such corruption.

They stumble into an empty room, and nothing matters but the how.

Bucky grips Gale’s chin, fingers firm and beckoning, and slips his tongue into Gale’s mouth, sweet and seeking. Desire crashes through him, sure as a puzzle piece clicking into place.

Gale tries to speed it up, give more, take more, hands insisting, wandering, harder, uglier, the way it’s supposed to be, but Bucky doesn’t relent. Traps Gale in this open, empty room with only the gentle bulk of his body and the tender press of his lips. Twines his hands through Gale’s hair, but doesn’t touch him further. Painful, aching sweetness and not a drop more, like all the pleasures of Gale’s body are contained solely in his lips and Bucky’s determined to uncover them without any aid—no bite of teeth, no pressure, just enough unyielding patience to get Gale kiss-drunk and whining. Only once Gale’s past the point of pride does Bucky leave him, slack-jawed, to mark his neck.

It’s overwhelming. His lips feel numb from over attention, but the rest of him, ignored for so long, feels newly untouched. A fresh crop of nerves for Bucky to defile. Sensitive. Hair trigger. Youthful exploration but devoid of fear, of anxious violence, because there’s nowhere safer for Gale than the surety of Bucky’s embrace. God-sent, unseen. If they’d promised Gale this sort of heaven earlier, maybe he’d have lived like he was earning this.

When Gale cums, shamed face hidden in Bucky’s chest, a last ditch effort to muffle his groan, Bucky doesn’t stop. He unzips them both and digs them out. Sure-handed, ignoring Gale’s attempts to join in.

He pushes them together, his velvet hardness bullying Gale’s limp, cum-covered cock. “Aw, cute,” Bucky mocks, as Gale’s cock twitches, “trying to wake back up, how polite.”

He props Gale up and back, leaning against the wall so he’s forced to watch. Bucky takes them both in one hand, slicked only with Gale’s cum and the pre leaking from Bucky’s tip. Gale’s never let himself process before, what other men look like. Keeps things perfunctory or professional or hurried, whichever is called for, and none of those call for Gale to stare. Now, the sight of Bucky against him, pale and heavy, is startling. A twist of Bucky’s wrist and Gale grunts, too much, too soon. It feels so nice, or maybe not nice at all.

Horribly, a tear catches at the corner of his eye. Gale grits his teeth, determined not to let it fall, but Bucky must be watching him instead of the slow tug of his hand, because he laughs a little, short and pleased, before he pauses. He worms the fingers of his unoccupied hand past the buttons of Gale’s shirt to brush over his nipple while he slowly runs his pinky along the ridge of Gale’s cockhead. The sound Gale lets out this time is closer to a whimper and the tear escapes down his cheek, all of Gale’s fight in tow. Bucky catches it with a kiss.

Bucky makes him cum again, dry, and maybe he’d have forced Gale to his knees, supplicant, if Gale had any bones left to maneuver. Instead, Gale watches Bucky spit in his own hand and finish himself off, saliva gathering in the back of his mouth, wishing nothing was holding him up, just so he could be closer. Bucky aims it so his cum lands in the ruined front of Gale’s pants.

Gale reaches out and swipes up the last bit of it clinging to Bucky’s slit. Sticks it in his mouth, quick, like there’s anybody here to stop him. It’s curiosity, of course. Investigation into the sound and touch and taste of an angel. But there’s no taste. No sensation of anything being in his mouth at all. A nothingness.

🤕

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.

so the sex dreams are a bit embarrassing, but Gale consoles himself by reminding himself he can't really control those. what he SHOULD be able to control are the fantasies that keep taking over his waking hours and interrupting prime billing time. he fantasizes about being held down and taken apart. he fantasizes about being so overstimulated his brain just ... shuts down. he doesn't want to think anymore. he just wants to give the reins over to John, who he knows he can trust completely. he's terrified about receiving pleasure, about being in his body and letting physical sensations guide him, which means he craves it more than anything.