#final chapter!

“Jesus Buck, go easy on me-” John pleads and Marge feels heat flood her face in the same moment her gut clenches. She exhales and forces herself to relax with a roll of her eyes, leans a little more against the wall to settle in.

“Say it again.”

Someone spits, and someone whines a half-beat later. She’s pretty sure she knows who did what.

“Come on, Johnny,” Gale coaxes, and this time Marge hears how his murmuring is punctuated with a sharp thrust, skin on skin and John moaning without any muffling. He murmurs something incomprehensible on the trailing end of it, raggedly strained. “Couldn’t hear you, sweetheart, gotta speak up. I know you can do better than that.” Another thrust, another whimper. It’s mean of him, to demand what he wants while making it increasingly difficult for John to give it to him. Marge bites her lip at the risk of smudging her lipstick on her teeth, presses a flat palm to her stomach just below her bra to feel her ribs expanding with a sharp inhale that does nothing to brace her, and the other to her burning cheek. Gale’s never like this with her and it’s mildly surprising to discover he is with John, even after that first flush of desperate excitement from when they’d started should have started to fade; perhaps the two of them are more alike than Gale’s really prepared to admit, and perhaps that’s why he’s so upset about it all. No wonder he can’t bring himself to find the words to explain why John’s rough handling bothers him so much.

John murmurs something again, rasping too low for Marge to hear but Gale must be able to because his voice is so soft when he praises, “There you go, not so hard, ‘s’it? That’s good, Bucky. Tell me again.”

John does, whatever it is, and that seems to satisfy Gale at least for the moment as he stops demanding John repeat himself in favor of fucking him, kissing him, telling him he’s good and it’s going to be alright and he’s got him and how this is exactly what he wants. Marge has to make a conscious effort to control her breathing, has to ignore the tight ache between her legs and the way she’s definitely getting wet just from listening to them like this. She supposes she should probably be more irritated that she’d been over there worrying when they were over here doing this, but mostly she’s relieved.

Surely Gale wouldn’t be treating John like this if he were about to run out on them? If he were truly gearing up to leave them she’s sure Gale would be shouting, or begging, or cold and angry and betrayed by yet another man disappointing him and leaving him to fend for himself. He wouldn’t be fucking him or kissing him or praising him so sweetly. John’s staying. He must be.

He has to be, they need him.

I don’t wanna do this without him, Gale had told her after John left this morning to go think about what he wants. I gotta have both of you. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I do, he’d told her and Marge had held him close, her standing between his spread knees and him sitting on the edge of the bed to hide his face in her chest and tremble through admitting what he’s still ashamed to need.

I don’t know why I can’t just do this the right way, he’d whispered, feathersoft agony. I don’t know what broke in me but it’s all wrong now, I’m all twisted up-

Marge had kissed his hair and rubbed his shoulders and forced herself to admit, We gotta just be wrong together then, ‘cause I don’t wanna do this without him either. I love you Gale, but we can’t do this on our own anymore, huh?

Technically they could, and if they have to they will, neither of them are built to quit on each other. She knows that down to her bones. There’s no force on earth that could make her leave Gale now that she’s got him and Gale won’t leave her either, he wouldn’t. They’d even be happy together, the two of them, just like they have been so far. They’d make it good, they’d keep building the love they’ve been working on for so long and she has to believe it would be enough to see them through the years. They’d be content and comfortable and the love would last long enough to give them a good life together.

But they need John. Gale needs him for reasons both known and unknown, and eventually she knows he’ll find the right string of words to explain it all in a way that’ll make John accept it, too. For Marge, she knows it’s a little different, the way she needs him, but for all that Gale’s fallen desperately in love with him Marge knows that she loves him like a friend, like family, like someone she gets to choose for herself without any weight of expectations driving her along without giving her the final say.

With Gale, there was never a doubt in anyone’s mind that they would go all the way. They were friends and sweethearts and lovers and so that was just the done thing, and lucky for them it’s what they actually wanted anyway. With John, she’s not supposed to want him at all, in fact no one would think twice about it if she refused to even give him the time of day. No one expects her to pick him for anything, no one wants her to pick him for anything, not even for a friend, but she likes him and she wants him and that’s hers to decide, nobody else’s. She’s picking John Egan for herself, and for Gale, and the world’s just going to have to get the hell over it and quit trying to make up her mind for her.

So there.

“Please, Buck,” John gasps, groans, and when Gale tells him to keep being good as he changes absolutely nothing about the pace he must be setting for the both of them Marge sucks in another deep breath, feels her own ribs expanding as far as the tight bodice of her dress will allow. The ache between her legs demands to be acknowledged, stroked and fucked and coaxed into sweet overwhelming pleasure. Their clearly orchestrated evening together taking care of her had been fun but they hadn’t done much with each other, all their attention focused solely on her as they took turns — not that she’s complaining! But it’s like a tease now, all the times she’s heard them moaning and laughing and fucking and kissing without getting to see it, and so with a steely-eyed determination she decides she finally gets to see what’s so important that they’re keeping her waiting for John’s answer like this, alone and afraid of what he’ll say.

John’s garage is modest, just barely big enough for his car, his mower tucked neatly away in the corner, and the workbench along the opposite wall that holds all his woodworking tools – chisels and knives and a couple little saws, a roll or two of sandpaper and a rubber mallet, nothing bigger than a hand tool. When he’s in there working he leaves the big rolling door open for light, but Marge knows it’s not the only source; she steps into the grass and trails her fingertips along the wall of the garage as she goes, all the way down the length of it and around the back corner. She darts a quick glance around but honestly at this point she can’t find it in herself to care if she gets caught peeping. Let them see. They watch John and they think they know him, they ‘know’ that he must be pursuing Marge, dragging her into debauchery with him, tempting a good woman away from her husband for his own quick pleasure. Well let them see her where she ought not to be. Let them figure out that if anyone’s been doing the tempting it’s been her, if anyone’s responsible for her ‘ruination’ then it’s her and her alone, and she’s had her eyes wide open the whole way down. She doesn’t care anymore.

The window over John’s workbench is a tiny thing, a single square foot of dusty glass cut up into even smaller, perfect quarter panes by a pair of perpendicular white-painted wood trims. Marge has to go up on her toes to peek through it and when she does she’s glad for the side of the garage under her hands and the way she’s pressed her whole front against it to avoid toppling forward; if it weren’t for the support she’s pretty sure her knees would give out.

In the abstract, she knows what they must be getting up to without her. Sodomy is a sin she’s heard plenty about whether she wants to or not: the corruption of it, the unnatural urge of sick men that goes against God’s will, the flagrant disregard for what’s right and proper and expected of a family man. She’d worried, of course she’d worried, when Gale came home and couldn’t get it up for her anymore, couldn’t do it like a married man should. But then he’d felt so guilty about it, so miserable, been so attentive and so eager to do literally anything else to make her feel good — without even getting anything for himself besides pride in a job well done — that she’d decided very quickly that it doesn’t matter if he’s a little different than how everyone says a married man should be with his woman. He’s still her Gale, still the love of her life, still deserves to get what he wants just as much as he gives the same to her, so long as it’s in his power to give it. It was in her power to love him for exactly who and what he is, and to give him the freedom to let John get close, so she’d given it to him gladly.

Even before John became a part of their most private and intimate conversations, she’d thought more than once about the logistics of it, what they might be looking for with each other — or, more generally, what any two sodomizing men might want from one another. Gale’s so good with his hands and his mouth, and she’s wondered in idle passing how he might still use them on her if she’d been born the other way, in a different kind of body. She’s even tried a few things on him herself to try to get his body as interested in her as his heart is, all to no avail. Then, after that first night Gale and John spent in the guest room together making such a ruckus, she’d wondered how it worked in much more specific detail, now knowing for certain the what of it just not the how, and with everything else going on since then she hasn’t found the right time or way to ask.

She’s finally gotten her answer, or at least one of them.

It looks like it should hurt, is the first thought that springs to mind. And maybe it does, John’s got his brows furrowed hard where he’s got his head laid down on his arms crossed on top of the workbench, bent over at the waist to get his shoulders low enough to lean on it like that. His mouth is hanging loosely open like he doesn’t know it, brow puckered and eyes squeezed shut, and through the thin panes of the window Marge can hear him even more clearly than she could at the door, ragged groaning that could be pain just as easily as pleasure. She flushes but forces herself to look, the light from the window catching on pale bare skin mottled with dark boot-shaped bruises where he’s got his trousers down around his thighs and his shirt shoved halfway up his back and belly to give Gale’s hands the space they need to hold him white-knuckle tight, bruises be damned.

Gale spits, hips still and hands holding John steady as the long, glinting strand of it stretches, stretches, breaks finally to land as a thick, shining, wet smear right where his cock disappears into a space she would certainly never expect it to fit. It’s been a long time since she was on the receiving end of it but she still remembers how big Gale felt inside her when they’d gone all the way before he’d shipped out, and that had even been in a place nature intended it to go. Gale rubs the spit in around his cock with his thumb and John doesn’t even twitch, in fact he relaxes with a sigh she can’t hear but can see in the rise and fall of his back.

“Wetter, or are you alright to go on?” Gale asks, sweeping his dry hand up from John’s hip and up his back to bury his fingers in soft loose curls, gently stroking. “Bucky?”

“Anything,” John slurs, mouth smushed against his own wrist growing sticky and wet with drool he doesn’t seem bothered by. “C’mon baby, gimme anything.”

Gale draws his hips back long and slow and Marge can’t help but stare at him, at the hard length of him emerging inch by inch as John moans - definitely pleasure this time, his face slack with bliss. He spits again when the flared head of him is holding John’ hole open wide and as he massages the slick into stretched taut muscle and fine dark fuzz she has to swallow a wet mouthful of her own, like her body’s gearing up to help him get John wet enough to thrust back into. Gale’s got a hand on John’s naked hip and the other brushing soft as a feather through his hair; Marge watches his face as he thrusts forward and has to swallow again at the look of careful concentration tightening every feature, his lips pursed around a slow exhale and his eyes half-lidded even as he focuses unerringly on John spread out for the taking beneath him.

Marge leans in to press her knuckles to her mouth, fist still resting on the wall of the garage, as she ignores the burning in her calves to stay up on her toes and keep watching.

Her gaze wanders eventually as they settle into the rhythm of it, though it doesn’t get very far before she goes still again, staring underneath John at his cock hanging free, slacks and shorts pulled taut where they’re shoved down around his thighs. Gale pauses, spits again, fucks in long and deep when John’s wet enough to take it. Lit rather dramatically by the glow from the window, Marge watches John’s cock drip slowly, the fine wet string of clear fluid glinting in the light for just a moment before it stretches far enough to break and drop somewhere on the floor, an involuntary mirror of the stretch and snap of Gale’s spit keeping him wet.

Gale leans in eventually, lays himself out over John, weight braced on his hand taken out of John’s hair to press it to the bench instead. He says something quietly enough that Marge can’t hear him through the window, and though she can’t hear John’s answer either she can at least read the, “Please,” that tumbles from his slack lips, watches him nod a few times, uncoordinated. Gale takes some sort of pity on him, kisses his cheek and his ear and nuzzles into his hair with his eyes squeezed shut and a pinch around his generous mouth in the moment before he turns his head away just to lay it down on John’s shoulder. His hips are still working, a shallow in and out, as he runs his hand on John’s hip down, down, to, she assumes, wrap around his neglected cock.

She can’t see for sure, the view obscured by Gale’s elbow and the way he and John are close enough now that it’s hard to tell where one of them starts and the other ends. But she can see the rhythmic motion of his shoulder, and the way John’s expression twists with pained relief, and she can hear Gale groaning, and telling John, just loudly enough to be heard through the window, “So good for me, Bucky, Jesus. Love you.”

Marge’s breath catches, half for the ragged emotion in Gale’s voice and half for the same on John’s face, his eyes fluttering open and his chin tucking towards his shoulder as he tries to look back at Gale sprawled out over him. He’s twisted the wrong direction, Gale’s head turned to face the garage door while John’s still facing the window, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He shifts his shoulders a bit, uncrossing one arm from under the other, and when his hand creeps into sight over his head he’s got his elbow bent and fingers tangled up with Gale’s to pull his arm at an odd angle, up and around his head, just to get his mouth on Gale’s knuckles.

And his eyes flash right to Marge’s, so quickly all she can do is freeze and feel her face burn bright pink.

“Your missus know you love me?” John teases, breathless and still staring right at her where he’s still laid out flat for the taking.

“Knows it better’n you do,” Gale snorts, which is…accurate. Marge wets her lips, tugs on the bottom one with her teeth, and John’s smirk only widens as he winks at her and then turns his head the other way to pull Gale in for a kiss so slick and open she can hear it crystal clear through the glass even with them both now turned away.

That’s her cue. Marge drops back down flat and turns to go, much though she’d like to stay and watch until they’re finished. There’ll be plenty of time for that later; she has to believe that, that John will stay with them and there’ll be more of this, as much of it as any of them could want, wherever they are.

She and Gale had kept talking after John’s escape to gather his thoughts, of course, but much to her frustration they’d gotten no farther than before. Gale’s still adamant he doesn’t want to move, and she adamantly refuses to stay. They’re too stubborn for each other, and just stubborn enough to make it work. A decision will have to made and Gale’s going to have to be the one to give ground, there’s no other way around it, but she’s going to have to grit her teeth and bite her tongue through the whole drawn-out process he’ll inevitably take to get around to the same way of thinking.

Marge marches back around John’s garage, gives them their privacy, lets herself into John’s empty mausoleum of a house to start gathering up any bits he’d missed in his mad dash, whatever that had been. Despite his sudden whiplash support of Gale’s insistence that they see this through, she knows he wants to leave. She knows he does, and if he’s going then she and Gale are going with him and he’s just going to have to deal with it. She’s brought them this far, after all, and she’ll keep it up for as long as she has to, reminding them (sometimes gently and sometimes not) that life can be better than the prisons they make in their own heads to keep themselves in line. Used to be the uniforms and ranks and the U.S. government’s expectations that did it, and then it was guns and razor wire and guards and dogs. She can’t imagine what it was like for them, doesn’t help that they won’t tell her in any kind of detail beyond what they mumble when they’re still fresh off their nightmares, but she’s seen the newsreels of some of the aftermath and gleaned a few bits from other returned soldiers more talkative than either of her boys. She at least knows that they’ve spent far too long being hemmed in to remember on their own that the freedom they fought so hard for applies to them as much as to anyone else.

They’ll come around.

John’s house is as chilling as ever, empty of just about everything that could soften it into something comforting. Marge starts upstairs, digs an old khaki green duffel out of the dusty depths of John’s closet to load it up with his dress uniform and a few spare shirts still hanging above it, and then with haphazard handfuls of his incidentals; toothbrush and toothpaste from the bathroom counter, the bar of Ivory out of the bathtub. She snags his towel off the back of the door and lays the duffel on the bed to free up her hands to fold it into a neat square and shove it in the bag too. She checks his dresser to find he’s already cleared it out, bends to look under the bed to make sure there was nothing under there but his locker, which she’d of course already seen him huffing and puffing to lug into the garage.

Downstairs, she finds a couple of novels on the mantle and…nothing else. No photos, no objects either of sentimental value or otherwise, not even a throw blanket for the sofa to soften it. She tucks the books into the bag with more care than she’d shown his toiletries and, just to be sure, does a final sweep of the rooms on the bottom floor. In the kitchen she finds a couple packs of cigarettes stashed around and some sloshing bottles of liquor, which she dutifully adds to the bag despite knowing it’s still bound to be a sore spot. His flask makes it in last, and with that Marge leaves behind the empty shell of John’s home with a resounding slam of the front door behind her, and she marches next door with clear purpose in each step.

Upstairs, she drops the bag off in the guest room despite having no intention of letting John sleep in there for at least a few nights, if not more. There’s not much need to unpack it so she doesn’t, she just tidies away their abandoned mugs of coffee from this morning to dump them in the kitchen sink, and then sets about tidying up the rest of the downstairs as well despite it not really needing it, just to have something to do while she waits.

She’d thought for sure that John and Gale were nearly done with each other by the time she’d left them to it, but she finishes tidying up without a hint of them and then finds herself at something of a loss. She sits on the couch, but feels too restless to be still. She heads for the kitchen but they still need to go to the grocer so there’s not much she can use to prepare something for lunch. She paces the length of the hallway between and that’s a little better, hands drifting to straighten up or trail along the photo frames scattered on the walls: wide photos of the land around Casper, stilted portraits of her parents, softly blurred candid photos of her and Gale over the years, snapshots of their courtship caught by happenstance more than by any intention to sit for photos of them. Marge had a friend growing up, Dee Rivers, who’d gotten a brand new Kodak Retina for her birthday, and there’s no telling how many rolls of film she went through in high school trying to capture every little moment with aggressive fervor. Marge hadn’t known then how much she’d appreciate it, but when Dee’s gift to her and Gale at their graduation had been an album of every single photo she ever got of them, she’d given Dee a big hug and a teary kiss on the cheek.

Marge stops her pacing to rest both hands carefully on the bottom corners of a little frame, a picture of her and Gale sitting too close together sharing an ice cream that’s melting all over both of them, laughing together at the mess they’re making, and she loves and misses him so fiercely the ache of it startles her just as much as the front door opening does a moment later.

Gale steps in first in the middle of hitching his trousers further up his waist. John slinks in after him with a hardtop suitcase held in front of him with both hands like it’s a shield, ducking his head and curling his shoulders like he always does as if he’s used to having a much bigger body to fit through the frame (or he’s used to much smaller doors to fit those wide shoulders through).

“Hey sweetheart,” Gale swoops in to kiss her cheek and Marge tips her head to allow it, eyes fixed on John’s over Gale’s shoulder. “Bucky’s got somethin’ to say to you.”

“Got your answer, then?” Marge asks, eyes still fixed on John as Gale steps back to take the suitcase off him and lean in, his back to Marge, to rest a hand on John’s shoulder and murmur something in his ear too quiet for her to pick up. He disappears upstairs and Marge puts her hands on her hips, eyebrow raised. “Well?”

John wets his lips and drags a long, burning look down the length of her, possessive and sure of his welcome. When he steps forward Marge has to fight the urge to take a step back, but she’s startled again by the way he only drops to his knees in front of her and lifts his hands to take both of hers, fingers half-curled under the drape of hers to bring her hands together in between them so he can kiss her knuckles softly enough his mustache barely tickles.

“This thing we’ve got going…I’m gonna stick it out,” he tells the back of her left hand, mouth pressed to it once and then once more for good measure before he trails up to kiss the same wrist. “And you and me are gonna find a way to talk our Buck into going somewhere we can do that without looking over our shoulders every hour of the day. That work alright for you, Mrs Cleven?”

Oh he’s devastating. He flicks a glance up at her through his lashes, the very picture of contrition if not for the glint of mischief in his eyes and the smirk he’s not quite managing to hide behind kissing the highest knuckle of her right hand.

“Yes, it does,” Marge agrees simply; John’s nice enough not to tease her for the breathless hitch of it. She clears her throat and adds, more strongly, “And just how close were you to running off instead?”

“Too close,” he admits with ease, with a shrug, with a kiss to the tender inside of her forearm. He stops again though to grin up at her properly, unashamed and leering with his head tipped back, throat bared. “You know I already got my punishment for that, though, so don’t worry about a repeat-“

“Oh is that what punishment looks like?” she drawls just to hear John laugh, and she loves the sound of it even when it rasps into a cough that makes him wince and shift his weight further to one side to favor the weak spot in his ribs.

“Couldn’t you tell? He’s cruel, Margie, wouldn’t let me use my hands or anything. Made me wait and beg for it and wouldn’t even give it how I asked-“

“Didn’t look like you minded all that much.”

John snorts and tugs gently on Marge’s hands in a request for help standing, which of course she offers with no fanfare. As soon as he’s on his feet again he wraps his arms around her shoulders to pull her in close and Marge goes, fitting herself into the broad curves of him with a sigh and running her hands slowly up and down from waist to shoulders and back. His heart beats steadily under the press of her ear, his mouth is firm and lingering when he presses it to the top of her head. Her linked hands fit snugly in the curve at the small of his back and Marge holds him close like that as she closes her eyes on the sight of her parents staring at them from the nearest picture frame, frozen forever in a staged tableau outside their home with her, an infant in her mother’s arms.

“I’m sorry for worrying you, Marge. But I’ve got a plan for gettin’ us outta here,” John mumbles. He sways her gently back and forth, weight tipping on and off the balls of his feet like he doesn’t quite realize he’s doing it. It’s soothing, and Marge sinks into the slow rocking of it with a sigh.

She takes a deep breath in just to tell him, “We can talk about it later. Let’s get ourselves sorted out like this first and then we’ll talk about what we can do elsewhere.”

“Neighbors’ll talk,” John warns, one big hand skimming down the length of her spine and back up, soothing.

“When don’t they?”

John sighs, “I suppose.” He thinks on that for a long moment before he snorts and shakes his head and Marge tries very hard not to think of him like a horse shaking off the flies buzzing around its ears. “Well in that case, if we’ve got nothing better to do…you feel like being sweet on me after your husband was so rough?”

Marge pulls away at that, laughing and smacking at John’s chest to keep him from reeling her back in. “No, we need groceries and to get you settled in and Gale needs to mow the lawn-“

“Oh c’mon Marge,” John whines, all theatrics. The stairs creak with Gale’s return and Marge catches him rolling his eyes on his way past to head into the sitting room. “Just a quick-”

“Get in here, John,” Gale interrupts from around the corner, decidedly less short with him than he was yesterday, and much more fond. “You promised.”

“What did you promise?” Marge asks; John tucks her under his arm and walks with her down the hall with another longsuffering sigh.

“That I’d let him fuss over-” he gestures broadly to himself and she understands when they round the corner to find Gale’s dug out their battered first aid kit from the bathroom cupboard while he was upstairs and is now waiting expectantly on his knees beside the coffee table with a determined set to his jaw and a pad of gauze already soaked in mercurochrome carefully cupped in one hand, a rivulet of reddish orange antiseptic racing down the pale inside of his wrist. She’s not so sure any of John’s cuts are still open enough to need cleaning like that but she’s hardly about to point that out, not if it’ll mean John will finally sit down and let himself be taken care of like he needs.

“I’ll leave you boys to it,” she decides; the look in Gale’s eyes promises some strong emotion brewing and, unlikely though it seems, he may actually have no choice but to find the words to express it if she makes herself scarce rather than giving him the option of a translator for the things he keeps locked away. She hadn’t been lying to John after all, they need groceries and he needs to get settled in, and the lawn may be able to wait for another week for Gale to cut it if need be but whatever this is between the two of them needs to be hashed out and made permanent as soon as possible.

She ducks out gracefully and can’t keep from smiling for the rest of the day, even out in public. She doesn’t care who sees.

–//–

Wednesday, Late August

John settles in, and with him so does something loose rattling around in Gale’s chest that’s been knocking against his ribs for much longer than he’s wanted John to be the one to soothe it. He stays. He still drinks, still smokes, but he hardly ever still tastes like whiskey when Gale kisses him at night, he keeps his wits about him and he makes a show out of being sweet on Marge sometimes even more than he is on Gale, and the shivery fear in the pit of Gale’s stomach starts to ease.

He’s still John, of course. He’s still mercurial, still gets locked up in his own head a little too often, still has his rough days. But on the other hand his smiles also last a little longer, he laughs more often, and though he clearly doesn’t like the process he’s still been eating everything Marge puts in front of him and it’s starting to show. There’s a softness to him that wasn’t there before, in every way, and Gale would be worried about how much he wants him were Marge not right there pushing them both to indulge in it.

He and Marge didn’t get much of a honeymoon. There was so much to be done to get their lives in order, Gale had work that he couldn’t leave for long and Marge was too eager to get them settled down and established to want to spend any real amount of time away from their home. Not that Gale had wanted to go anywhere to begin with, so that’d suited him just fine, and that was even before they’d realized the full extent of his inability to please her like he should. Their honeymoon period was a little too fraught to enjoy like they were supposed to, there was nothing they’d done that had justified the knowing glances and raised eyebrows the folks who knew them sent their way when they went into town for anything.

This honeymoon period isn’t at all like that one, but Gale thinks it can’t be called much of anything else. They’re figuring it out, how to make it all work when they’re together, and the process is…fun. In a strange kind of way.

Marge likes watching almost as much as she likes participating. John likes giving it to her as much as he likes getting it from Gale. Gale likes giving it to John while Marge tells him how good he’s doing and teases John about how badly he wants it. Marge likes it when either of them use their hands or mouth on her, and she especially likes it when they both do, together. John grins and laughs and teases and pulls Gale into his teasing so often it almost doesn’t feel right anymore to be together without smiling, without laughing even just a little, and every time John makes him laugh Marge looks at him all shiny-eyed and gorgeously happy like she had done almost constantly before he left for Europe, and it all feels right. John makes him feel more like the man she fell in love with all those years ago, and Gale has decided it’s no use being ashamed of that. They need him, plain and simple, and John likes more than anything to be needed. Wanted. To be good.

He seems quite happy to be told that so often they’ve given him no choice but to finally start to believe it’s the truth.

With things at home going so well, it stands to reason that a cost must be incurred elsewhere. Since the incident that night at the bar, things at the plant have been..tense. Nothing he can’t handle, of course — these guys have nothing on the Germans — but it does mean that the relatively benign friends he’d made now do their best to avoid being seen fraternizing with him now. It doesn’t matter, really, it’s not as if he’s really looking for friends amongst these men or anywhere else, but the glares and muttering just out of ear shot are enough like his days in the stalag to put him on edge.

He’s not going to be the first to break though. With John’s settling in there’s also come an unspoken truce, temporary and unhappy but there, on the issue of their getting out of town. At first there’d been too much to do with getting John moved in and doing enough making up in every direction to soothe all their ruffled feathers; by the time they were all calm and happy again it had been too long, and they’d slipped back into old patterns without the topic coming up again. Gale’s perfectly happy to let it stay that way, which means he just has to stick to his own advice and get on with things, head down, teeth clenched around the toothpicks he gnaws and snaps to nothing, eyes and ears wide open for any sign of escalation that thankfully doesn’t seem to be coming for him anytime soon, but he’s not so foolish to think that’ll hold forever.

He’s handling it — and besides, it just makes coming home to Marge and John that much sweeter at the end of the day.

Tonight Gale pulls into the driveway with the rear view mirror tipped up towards the ceiling to cut off the blinding glare of the sunset at his back, and when he puts on the brake and cuts the engine he sits there for long moments in the quiet, just breathing. He’s got his window rolled down to keep the car from getting too stuffy in the late August evening and he sits there in the light breeze — head tipped back and eyes shut and bent elbow half-hanging out over the door — and he sighs through a few deep breaths to work the worst of the tension out of his shoulders before he goes inside. He nearly dozes off like that even, each breath slower than the last until the sound of footsteps scuffing by on the sidewalk at the end of the driveway behind him pulls him back out of it.

He rolls the window up, gets out with a stretch of his sore back, and freezes when he turns on his heel to cross the drive to the back porch. He watches for a long moment, tries and fails not to frown, not to worry.

“What happened?” he asks in lieu of his usual softer greeting when he shoulders into the kitchen. Marge is standing at the sink, one arm around her middle and the other elbow braced on it so she can chew on her thumbnail the way her mother always hated to see her doing.

“He got a letter.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the sight through the window where John’s pacing around the empty yard next door playing another game of baseball all by himself, but she at least tilts her head towards the jut of the breakfast bar. Gale snatches up the letter laying on it where it’s clearly been tossed without a care for how it landed and he steps up behind Marge to hook his chin over her shoulder as he reads.

It isn’t long, but by the time he’s skimmed it his teeth are clenched hard enough Marge stops chewing on her nail long enough to tap his jaw to remind him to loosen up.

Major Egan,

In light of recent events, which I’m sure need no explanation, I have no choice but to inform you that your position at the school has been terminated, effective immediately. We appreciate your service and your dedication to your work, but I have a duty to consider the safety of my students as well as the comfort of their parents, and so this is where we must part ways. I’m sure you can appreciate the difficult position we’ve been placed in to have come to this decision.

Best of luck with any future endeavors, kindest regards, etc etc.

Principal Hugh Perry

“How long has he been out there?”

Marge sighs and her hair tickles softly against the side of his neck when she leans back to settle herself more firmly against his chest. 

“A while. Takin’ it pretty hard, I think.”

Of course he is, Gale doesn’t say, he’s already hanging on by a goddamn thread as it is. He hums, and he kisses Marge for a belated proper hello with a hand on her hip to turn her far enough towards him to manage it, and together they turn back to the window to watch John ruffle aggressive hands through his hair as he walks a lopsided diamond with his eyes fixed firmly on his feet.

“Reckon I oughta go get him.”

“He might feel worse in here, all cooped up.”

“Maybe, but I don’t like him out there alone.”

Marge nods and stands up straight again to let him go, gaze still fixed on John and his pacing, thumbnail back between her teeth.

It’s the first time John’s gone back to his house since they finished getting his affairs in order to prepare to sell it. Gale has no idea if there’s some significance to that or not but that hardly seems important beyond the logistics of getting him back where he belongs. A waist-high chainlink fence is hardly a wall of barbed wire, though, so Gale’s relatively confident in his chances.

“Bucky,” he calls, and it seems to fall on deaf ears as John keeps kicking his miniature baseball diamond into the grass, and from here, leaning on the fence, Gale can hear he’s muttering to himself, though he’s still too far away to pick out any words. “John Egan!” he barks when it’s clear John didn’t hear him, “Your two o’clock!”

When John twists his head to look at him his whole body follows like a marionette and Gale would be a liar if he ever claimed to be immune to the pleasure of seeing the way recognition and relief chase each other across John’s so-expressive face any time Gale’s the one to pull him out of one of his tailspins.

“Got a big game goin’ on out here, Buck,” he rasps but he’s drifting closer anyway already like he can’t help it.

“I can see that. Marge and I wanna know the score.”

That gets him a smile, maybe a little dead-eyed but the amusement is genuine enough for all of the half second that it lasts. John keeps drifting, feet dragging him closer until Gale can reach out over the top of the fence and pull John in the rest of the way with an index finger tucked between two of the buttons of his shirt, knuckles crooked to hold on and tug.

“C’mere sweetheart,” he murmurs. They can’t kiss out here, that’s too much more than the shade too far that is John having clearly moved in with them, but John still gets close enough that they would if they could, and it’d be easy as anything to do it. “Why don’t you come back inside? Startin’ to worry Marge.”

“If I come in now I’m gonna start a fight you don’t wanna have.” He says it so plainly that for a moment Gale can only blink, just once.

“What fight’s that?”

“New York.”

Gale takes a deep breath in and nods, not necessarily agreement but just to show he’s heard. Of course, John’s plan. His grand plan to run away to the biggest, nastiest, most crowded, dangerous city east of the Mississippi, for the three of them to start some kind of life there as if there’s anything for them in New York City but living too much on top of one another and grueling factory work that’ll grind them all to miserable dust. He knows John’s got some romantic ideal vision of the city in his head and maybe Gale’s got too much of the opposite but still — John’s right, it’s most likely going to be an argument.

“Well we’re gonna have it sooner or later anyway, may as well be now. Get inside and let’s at least have it before supper, air it out a little so you can breathe. Come on, get moving.” This time he’s clearly not asking and when Gale turns back to the house John follows so blindly he walks straight into the fence, kicking it with a shivering rattle of the links against the support posts. John curses the thing with some feeling even as he vaults over it with a clumsy thud.

Marge is waiting for them in the kitchen, of course, but before she can say anything Gale takes her hand and tugs her towards the hallway. He tells her, “John’s gotta talk to us about somethin’,” and it only takes her a moment’s glance at John’s miserable glower to nod and follow along as Gale pulls her into the living room. She sits down onto the couch beside him to give John the room to pace and lays her hands neatly in her lap, the picture of patient expectation.

John, of course, gets back to his pacing immediately, not a big lopsided baseball diamond drawn with his feet but a barely-contained back and forth, big strides that eat up the space in the living room too quickly. He turns smartly on his heel at each end of the room and Gale settles into the couch with his hands clasped tight between his knees to hide their trembling as John starts to lay his thoughts out for them.

New York City

Moving so close to winter isn’t exactly ideal. The city’s cold and blustery and people aren’t so nice in the snow and the ice as they are when the sun’s shining, but it’s not so bad. They arrive just at the end of the warm days of autumn, frost nipping but not yet lasting even as the sun weakens. Logistically, it’s not the worst.

They find an apartment in a decent neighborhood that’s got two bedrooms, both to keep up appearances and simply because the arrangement works for them on the rare nights someone doesn’t want to share a bed with the other two. There’s a sitting room with room for a television and a radio, no fireplace but the radiators can keep up with the cold well enough if they wear some extra layers in the evenings, and they don’t need a mantel when they can just hang all of Gale’s service photos and the shadowbox of his things right on the walls instead. Gale’s books all fit in the room between a tall shelf in the corner and a long, low shelf under the television set, and it’s not as if he doesn’t also usually have a pile of them somewhere else too just waiting to be read should the shelves overflow. It’s a bit of a tight fit, but it works. It’s enough.

The kitchen’s small, too, of course, but with some careful planning and some extra shelves put up on the walls there’s room for all of Marge’s cookbooks and utensils and all to have their own spots. They can even squeeze a little dining table just big enough for the three of them into one corner, so long as they don’t mind having a chair sticking out a bit into the walkway. There’s an Automagic in the other corner near the sink, and a pulley clothesline for drying right outside the window above it, and an electric refrigerator instead of an icebox. All the modern conveniences with only a small sacrifice of space, that’s all.

More important than their apartment, though, is that now, in the middle of so much growth and progress going on around them, they’re completely unremarkable. No one watches them closely, no one cares what they’re doing, everyone’s so wrapped up in their own lives and the bustle of the city that three new people moving into some unremarkable apartment isn’t even noteworthy, let alone something to be curious about. They’re left alone save for cordial greetings from the neighbors when they cross paths and, when invited, visits from Marge’s friends, and John’s.

He’s got work that Rosie helped him land, an office job related just enough to aviation to be interesting without touching too close to things he’d like to forget. Marge finds a job operating telephones, always necessary in a busy place like the city. She’s good at it, so quick and clever and friendly, and she likes it, the social aspect of it as well as the satisfaction of getting to put that brilliant mind of hers to good use every day. Gale’s got his heart set on a college degree like he’d been too busy to get when he’d been stationed in Florida before the war, where Marge had gotten hers. He’d studied as much as possible while he was in training but hadn’t managed to actually get his paper before he’d been sent overseas and he still wants it, he can go to NYU and get it, or anywhere he wants — there’s plenty of choice in a city that big. Between John and Marge’s wages there’s more than enough to cover their living expenses and Gale’s GI benefits will cover the degree and they’ve got a whole life they can build up just the way they like-

“I’m not living in New York.”

John stumbles to a full stop, feet and tongue giving up on him in the same moment with his hands still spread with his gesturing as he tries to paint them a picture of this oh-so-perfect life — like it isn’t filtered through about ten layers of delusional romanticizing, not a single bit of it realistic.

“Jesus Buck, give it a chance,” John snaps. “Never even seen the place, how can you be so goddamn sure you won’t like it just fine?”

“Don’t need to see it, I know it. The hell’m I supposed to do in a city like that? Everyone’s all crowded on top of each other fighting and stinking and living with the noise of everyone else around them through the walls and the windows — you didn’t get enough of that over there?”

That stops John short, his cheeks pale with the shock of it. Marge’s hand slips onto his knee, the gentlest censure imaginable, but Gale doesn’t look at her. He stares John down, tries to urge him to really think about what he’s suggesting.

He does at least find it in himself to dig up some guilt for the hurt in John’s eyes when he rasps, “It’s not gonna be like a damn combine, Buck. It’s…we can make it nice, just like here. Can’t we, Marge?”

“John…” Marge’s voice is low, purposefully pitched that way no doubt to soothe, but Gale can still hear the apology building in it. “I’m so sorry baby but I agree with Gale. I don’t wanna live in New York either.”

I don’t wanna leave. Gale remembers whining it as a boy, still too young to understand just how much he was expected to be seen and not heard.

(“But you’ve been there, Marge, and you had a nice time right? You know it’s not so bad as he’s thinking-“)

His ears wouldn’t quit ringing for a week after his father was done cuffing his fists against them, and by the end of that week they’d left anyway, had run from one rickety house to another to avoid the man in the pressed trousers who always came every month to ask for money, each time meaner than the last.

(“I know, and I had a great time…but I also saw what those apartments you’re talkin’ about are really like and he’s got a point, John, everyone’s packed in all together like a tin of sardines and that’s no way I want us to live-“)

The next time they picked up and ran Gale had figured out he needed to keep his mouth shut about what he wanted, or didn’t. His father had said they needed to go so they did, Gale’s things shoved haphazardly in a dented old suitcase alongside his father’s equally meager wardrobe, and as they drove away he’d caught the glint of a set of brass knuckles on his father’s hand curled too tight around the steering wheel — a precaution for the landlord or a threat for Gale, he’s never been sure.

(“So we find somewhere that’s not so crowded! We can look around, get Rosie, and Croz ‘n Jean, and maybe even your friend Marty to help us look — we won’t be flying blind or anything, we can find somewhere that’s right!”)

The next time, Gale’s clothes got their own suitcase, his father’s shoved into a motheaten duffle alongside his shotgun. That time the landlord surprised them and he wasn’t asking nicely, he’d come with a dog and a pistol that he’d smacked Gale’s cheek with for lying and saying that they could pay if he just gave them until the real due date.

The time after that he only had one spare set of clothes and he was wearing them on top of the rest to keep warm under a coat that was more patch than wool.

(“Maybe not the city but a suburb-”

“No! No more suburbs, Marge. Please. I’ve had enough of nice lawns and white picket fences to last me a lifetime, I think.”)

The time after that they’d had nowhere to go for weeks. Gale had come to despise the inside of that truck almost as much as he’d long since come to loathe the man driving it.

The time after that-

And the next-

And then-

“Honey?”

Gale blinks back to himself and finds John watching him from much closer than he’d been pacing, close enough to knock his toes against Gale’s with a dull thunk of leather on leather. 

John tilts his head first one direction then the other, squints, purses his lips like studying Gale is the most complicated problem he’s ever been faced with. Gale manages to play along in his own small way, raising an eyebrow at him and lifting his chin in silent defiance, but John still kicks him again, a gentle tap muffled nearly to silence by the thick carpet. Gale nudges him back and John nods like that’s answered his unasked question.

“It’s okay Marge, looks like he’s still alive in there,” he tells her and though Gale smiles just a little for the weak joke Marge tenses against his side and fixes John with a flat look, no doubt for the morbidity of it. Her shoulders relax again slightly under the arm Gale slings around them, and the rest of her irritation visibly melts away moments later when he brings that hand up from her arm to brush the backs of his curled knuckles against her cheek instead, not quite stroking but close enough as he leans in to press a kiss to her hair.

“Sorry sweetheart, you say somethin’?”

“No,” Marge sighs. She kicks her shoes off to bring her feet up onto the sofa beside her and curl in closer to Gale’s side. “We just decided no suburbs, is all.”

“Oh. That’s fine. Good.”

His head’s still too full of the endless parade of featureless shacks his father dragged him to every few months, every time the rent came due without a big win at the track or the pool hall to match it, to know if that’s actually good or not. He doesn’t want to live in a city but nor does he want to be on the fringes again like he was back then, too far away to get any help even if he’d ever been able to swallow enough shame to ask for it (he hadn’t). What’s so wrong with a suburb instead?

Gale doesn’t get a chance to ask; John squints at him for a long moment, though what he’s looking for Gale has no idea, nor can he tell if he finds whatever it is or not. John’s expression is locked down tight, nothing but grim acceptance in the tight press of his lips and the stubborn set to his jaw.

“Well – no suburbs and no New York, really. Right?” he eventually mutters, surly and with ill grace. He nods to himself without waiting for an answer — mouth turned down in an exaggerated frown and his hands on his hips — and exhales a slow sigh out of his nose as he looks between Gale and Marge. “Right. I’m gonna take a walk.”

“John-” Marge starts, but Gale stops her with his free hand on her thigh before she can get up to follow him out, and a moment later the front door clicks shut so quietly it’s nearly silent.

“Let him work it out.” Marge’s wary glance at him is warranted, he’s willing to acknowledge, even if it bothers him. “What?”

“You’re alright just letting him go – when he’s that upset?”

He’s working on it. “Yes.”

Again, the skepticism written all over her face is warranted. Again, it bothers him, and he’s too worn out from a long day to curb his tongue as much as he should.

“What, Marge?”

“Nothing,” she huffs and stands, rustling her skirts straight with a snap of her wrists. “I’ll get started on supper, you keep an eye out for him.”

She leaves without a glance back and Gale tilts his head back onto the sofa to avoid having to stare at his own photos on the mantel across from him as he listens to Marge banging around in the kitchen. He listens to her chopping, the staccato patter of the knife on the cutting board, the fibrous break of vegetables under her hands. He waits to get up until he hears something sizzling in a pan and tells himself that he’s not waiting until she’s trapped there over the stove, he’s just…letting her work off some frustration first.

He drifts down the hall and when he reaches the kitchen door he stays in it, not daring to take a step further without permission.

“Marge,” he calls; her shoulders twitch but she gives no other sign she’s heard except maybe a too-savage thrust of the knife through a pork chop she’s slicing a slab of fat off of. “Sweetheart, you said it yourself — he feels too cooped up in here when he’s in a mood.”

“So? Didn’t stop you from bringin’ him in just a few minutes ago!”

“So, we’ve gotta let him work it out on his own. If we don’t he’ll never believe we trust him to come back.”

Marge turns to look at him over her shoulder, not quite a glare but definitely accusatory. “You don’t fool me Gale, you don’t like him leavin’ anymore than I do, so don’t get high and mighty about it at me.”

“I didn’t say I like it, I said it’s gotta be done. He’ll be back for supper.”

Marge says nothing, just stirs the vegetables sizzling in the pan and goes back to trimming the pork chops, her back once again firmly to him.

“I’ll go keep an eye out for him, then,” Gale tells the rigid line of her shoulders and he pretends not to hear her sigh behind him as he goes. He could sit on the stoop, he supposes, or in Marge’s chair in the sitting room. He could sit comfortably by the radio and keep one eye on the street and the other on a book. He could be relaxed about it, could wait patiently, but there’s a tight buzzing sort of thing under his skin, a threat of more memories of a succession of more dingy houses, lurking just beneath the surface, and Gale knows that until John walks back through the door safe and sound he won’t be able to let his guard down.

He steps to the left instead, into the den. The angle of the light in here is ever so slightly different from the way it cuts across the living room, some twelve feet between one window and the other enough of a step removed to change everything. Gale stands to the left of the window, leans against the wall with the curtain bunched up under the press of his shoulder, to cross his arms and look up the street in the direction he’s sure John went.

He could follow him again. He could tail him along flat long sidewalks and call out to him under a streetlight, just flickering on for the evening. He could look at the tired lines of his face, the slumped defeat in his shoulders, when he tells him to turn around, that that’s far enough, Major. He doubts John would ask to be hit again, but if he did for some reason Gale thinks he might do it without waiting to be goaded into it this time, wouldn’t say no. He’s learned very well that John wants it both ways sometimes, gentle and painful all wrapped up in one; he’d once thought that to be gentle with John was to be rough with him, and to some degree he knows that’s still true. If it’s the only way he’ll find comfort tonight, if he really wants Gale to hurt him just to also pout at him to help him mop up then fuck, he could do it. He’d lay John out and then take him home, hands wandering in the only way they’re allowed in public, a bracing arm around his waist, a hand curled around his wrist to keep John’s body draped over him, heavy and loose and the smell of hot iron in his nose from the dribble of it down John’s face. He’d get him inside, where he can hold him pressed in a compromising curl over the sink so he won’t drip blood on the carpet or the linoleum, and he’d lay over his back to hold his head up for him again, and he’d straighten up his nose with a sharp cartilage crunch…only this time he’d kiss him too, after setting it. He’d taste blood on John’s open mouth and chase it down with an unruly hunger he shouldn’t feel. He’d let John take him by the hips like he’d tried to that late June night in his kitchen, before Gale could accept that he felt things for John that made him want more and more of it, insatiable filthy hunger licking at his ribs.

He could do it. They could do it all over again. John might not even remember having done it the first time, he’d been stumbling on his whiskey, talking too slow and careful in the way of an alcoholic deep in his cups. Maybe they could have a do-over, maybe this time Gale could drag John back right where he wants him and love him just as hard as he hits him.

He stands at the window and lets the room get dark around him. He stands there when the streetlights flicker on, and porch lights, and the last of the summer’s fireflies come bobbing out of the tall grass of a few yards that need trimming.

Marge’s voice is soft when she stops outside the door to look in. “Any sign of him?”

Gale takes a deep breath in, shakes himself out of his reverie. Shakes his head no. Not yet.

“Supper’ll be on the table in ten minutes.”

“Alright.”

She leaves him to it, doesn’t ask if he wants the light on. Gale shuffles forward a step to press his temple to cool glass, squints a little and tilts his chin to see even just an inch or two further up the road, his stomach heavy with dread.

Something scuffs against the pavement just outside and Gale jerks away from the window to twist and face it straight on — John. Hands in his pockets and expression relaxed but resigned, he’s coming up the street from the opposite direction, as if he’s just coming over from his own place next door.

Gale’s got the front door open for him by the time his foot is on the bottom step.

“Smells good in there, Buck,” he says; Gale steps aside to let him in, shuts the door behind him. “Saw you waitin’ for me,” he murmurs much more softly the moment they’re alone, the hallway dark with just the lights in the kitchen at the other end of it to cut through the gloom. John kisses him in an uncomplicated greeting, sweet and soft and just for him.

“Uh-huh.” He breathes it soft as a feather against the warm, damp press of John’s mouth to his.

“Looked like you’d wait there all night.”

“If I had to.”

John hums, kisses him again a little more deeply. His arms slide around Gale’s neck and Gale leans against his chest in return, slings his arms around his waist.

“‘M sorry about New York,” Gale sighs.

“I know. Me too.”

Another kiss. A nudge of the end of John’s nose against the end of his. A kiss. A kiss.

“Decided I’m gonna follow you anywhere, though,” John tells him, low like a secret, “wherever you wanna go, and I’ll be happy about it because it’s where you are. The rest of it’s just window dressing.”

This time Gale kisses him first; it’s easier than trying to find the right words to say back, but he knows John understands.

“Boys,” Marge calls. When they turn to look at her, she’s leaning against the door frame at the end of the hall, haloed by the kitchen lights behind her. “Supper’s on the table. Come in and eat.”

—//—

Tuesday, early September

“Jesus John, yes,” Marge gasps and John grins with feral gritted teeth as he doubles down on his efforts. It’s worth the burn in his thighs and the cramp in his hand and forearm to watch Marge’s back arch right off the bed as she comes for him, red lips parted and strands of hair clinging to the sweat beading on her forehead and at her temples. He slows down when she starts whimpering but does absolutely nothing to be gentle, just takes his sweet time in between each thrust so she feels every inch of him, every second of overstimulation. He thumbs at her clit and ducks down to lick the faint salt of her sweat off a bruise on her neck in the shape of Gale’s mouth from last night.

He fucks Marge hard and slow with his free hand wrapped around a pole of the headboard and with one foot on the floor off the side of the bed for better leverage, and he doesn’t let her squirm away from the too muchness of it all until she’s come again and each breath is a gasping sob for air, eyes dry but the whole rest of her wet with sweat or the slick of her come smeared between her thighs (and all over his, too). He pulls out when she begs him to and shoves a couple fingers inside her instead, just once with rough efficiency, to wet them enough to glide over his cock so he can finish himself off with a few sharp tugs while she recovers. He groans as he finishes; she pants up at the ceiling and responds a beat too late when he kisses her, quick and smiling. When he sits up on the knee planted on the bed between her thighs she lifts just her head to look down the glistening length of herself and John’s smile widens into a shit-eating grin when she groans and flops back down flat.

“John,” she huffs, almost whining, “now I have to take a shower!”

“Hate to break it to you, but you were gonna need one anyway, doll,” he snickers and reaches forward to scrub thick sticky strings of his come deeper into the thatch of hair between her legs, scritching fingertips through the damp tangle of it for just a second before she shouts a wordless exclamation, laughs in a nose scrunching kind of way that could almost be a giggle, kicks his hand away and rolls naked across the bed to stumble off the other side of it onto her feet, hair a mess and all of her flushed a tender overheated pink.

“You’re a menace, Bucky,” she bites with an accusatory finger pointed at him that she leaves up until she’s slipped behind the door into the bathroom to start up the shower with a squeak of a knob, the pipes groaning and clanking behind the wall. John lays out on his back on clammy sheets, arms and legs spread as far as he can get them to let the cool fall breeze slipping through the open window beside the bed tickle over every damp inch of him.

“You still gonna be alright to come help me with the shopping?” Marge calls over the water pattering in noisy waves into the tub. John lifts one hand off the mattress to drape it heavily over his own bare chest instead, scritching his fingertips through the faint dusting of sweat-clumped hair on his sternum, same as he’d done between Marge’s legs.

“‘Course I am, gorgeous. You just-“ he yawns so widely his jaw pops half out of socket and he has to raise his hand to it to nudge it back where it goes, “-just say when we’re goin’ and I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

“You wanna take a nap first?”

“Maybe, yeah. You’ll take one too, though, huh? Did I not do it good enough this time or somethin’? You always sleep after.”

“‘Course it was good,” she interrupts herself with a wide yawn to rival his, audible even over the splash of water against the tub, “I’m just not sleepin’ on those filthy sheets.”

John cracks an eye open and looks at what he can see of the sheets around his own spreadeagle limbs. Alright fine, so there are a few extra-damp splotches adding to the general clamminess of their sweat that likely need addressing sooner rather than later, but so what?

“Good thing we’re airing out the room at least, I guess,” John huffs. His head falls back onto the bed, cracked open eye slips shut again. He runs an idle fingertip in circles around a nipple, not to do anything in particular, just to feel it. The breeze and his drying sweat are conspiring against him, raising the hairs on his arms as his whole body tingles with goosebumps in the chill, nipples hardening more for that than his idle touching.

The water shuts off and within a minute, maybe two, Marge is crawling over him again, damp and warm and settling in with her hips lined up just right against his, her chest pressing soft to his diaphragm. No towel or a stitch of clothing to be found.

“Thought you weren’t sleepin’ on these sheets?” he yawns.

“‘M not on the sheets, am I?” As if to further demonstrate the point she lays her head down on his chest and John smiles as he slings his arm around her shoulders, presses a blind kiss to her temple.

“Wanna go lay down in the guest bed? Could get an hour in and still make it to the store in plenty’a time.”

“Mm. Mhm.”

John cups his hand against the back of her head (his fingers are…mostly clean. They’re at least not sticky anymore, just a little flaky) and pets the side of his thumb against the soft fall of her hair. She gets steadily heavier against him with every deep breath and as much as John would like to fall asleep here like this he knows he shouldn’t let her. She huffs at him for jostling her awake but she still helps him up and out of bed and holds his hand loosely, just their fingertips tangled, as they cross the hall to the guest room, so she must not mind too much.

“Ohhh this was the right call,” Marge sighs as she slides between crisp, cool sheets and promptly rolls onto her front to bury her face in the pillows. John opens the window in here too before he slides in next to her, a little less luxuriously as he still needs to clean up and he doesn’t need to doom this set of sheets to the wash, too. They’ve been going at it for a while, and he’s pretty ripe with a damn good workout, not to mention covered in the drying evidence of Marge’s pleasure on his hips and thighs and hands and chin-

Marge turns onto her side just enough to slide a proprietary hand across his chest to settle right over his steady heart, and within moments they’re both out cold.

John wakes groggily some time later (the angle of the light’s only a little different, can’t be more than an hour he hopes) to a touch he’s not expecting, but that doesn’t make it unwelcome. Marge’s slim fingers fit just as nicely between his cheeks as they do everywhere else so he just sighs and lets his left leg fall wide, knee bent and thigh turned out perpendicular to his hip, to give her room to explore.

She doesn’t say anything so he doesn’t either. He keeps his eyes shut and stays as relaxed as he can as he feels Marge prop herself up onto an elbow to get a better angle as she slips him a fingertip, dry and dragging but he doesn’t mind.

“You and Gale really like it like this,” she muses, mouth pressed to his shoulder so it comes out faint and muffled.

“Mhmm.”

“Would you like it with me too?”

“Mm..probably. If you wanna find out right now though we’re gonna run out of time to go into town.”

John forces his eyes open just enough to look at Marge through feathered lashes, watches her consider the options with a thoughtful twist to her smudged red lips even as she works her finger slowly a little further inside him, down to the second knuckle with a drag that’s all tight friction. Her eyes flash to his and he doesn’t look away, just watches her think and keep touching. 

“I wanna try it, but not right now. Another time?”

John shrugs, “Sure, Margie. Anything you want, doll, you know that.”

Marge smiles, almost shy, and takes her sweet time pulling back out, even snags her fingertip on the inside of his rim to give him a little tug before it slips all the way out and leaves him empty. She presses a quick kiss to his cheek and tells him to go freshen up, so naturally he does. He gets dressed to actually go out in public for the day, even gels his hair and pats on aftershave on his freshly smooth cheeks, and when he heads downstairs to hunt for the car keys Marge is waiting for him looking as buttoned up and prim as anyone could ever want her to be, all ready to go.

Gale’s got his car at work of course so they take John’s, windows cracked open just enough to enjoy the crisp fall afternoon, the last clinging bits of late summer heat lost to the cool breeze threatening the cast of his gel and rippling across Marge’s hairscarf, though it’s tied securely enough it doesn’t make any grand escape attempt.

“You doin’ okay, John? With-“ Marge gestures vaguely but John knows what she means. He doesn’t spare the lane that leads out to the high school a second glance as they pass it by.

“Fine.” It’s only the second day of the new school year; if he were there he’d most likely still be going over introductions to all the equipment and the projects he’d planned for the year – nothing special, just the same projects he did last year, but with a new crop of kids looking up at him it’d feel brand new, he knows. “That what all this keeping busy has been about?” he asks as he turns into the small lot at the grocer’s a few blocks down from the school, trawling the aisles to find a good spot.

Yesterday she’d asked for his help in the garden, weeding and mulching and otherwise preparing the flower beds for the first frost, even though they’re trying to be gone before winter settles in and it won’t matter much to them anymore if the plants survive or not. Today, it’s a good hard fuck and a trip to the grocery store in time to make something nice for supper that he’ll probably end up helping with, too. He wonders how long it’ll take her to run out of activities to keep him busy, though he decides in the next moment that he doesn’t actually care. He doesn’t need to be distracted like a child who can’t sit still, but he appreciates that she wants to do what she can to keep him from dwelling on yet another of life’s disappointments.

“Maybe. Oh, just there, Bucky,” she points through the windscreen, “Henrietta’s leaving.”

John grits his teeth and drifts to a stop to wait and any hope he might’ve had to not be spotted is dashed almost immediately. Henrietta Smith — who lives across the street and three houses down from John’s place and who has fashioned herself to be the queen bee of the neighborhood social circle since well before he blew into town — glances at them as she turns away from loading her paper sacks into the trunk of her husband’s Pontiac Torpedo, even shades her eyes with one red-gloved hand to see better. John wonders how often he’s felt that same stare on his back through curtains twitched nosily aside, without any expectation of ever knowing the answer. He’s sure the number’s plenty high even without knowing the specifics.

“Marge,” he says and he finds it impossible to say it any other way but through nearly-clenched teeth, his whole body so tight the steering wheel creaks under his grip. “Noticed somethin’ when I was movin’ my stuff in. Got a question for you, keep forgettin’ to ask.”

“What is it?”

Henrietta has straightened up again with a look on her face like she’s just been spit on. John tries to relax his grip as she sets her shoulders and marches towards the passenger side of the car.

“Whatever happened to my pistol?”

“Whaddya need-?”

John holds every muscle clenched as tight as he can to keep from jumping when Henrietta raps a knuckle on Marge’s window, though Marge isn’t quite so disciplined. She jumps and hurries to crank the window down another inch or two, just enough for Henrietta to lean over and peer over her little white-framed sunglasses at Marge first, then him. She sticks her fingertips into the gap Marge made for her, curls them over the edge of the glass, and John’s jaw aches with the urge to clench his teeth around them and bite clean through.

“Yes, I thought it was you two,” Henrietta drawls, like they were in the middle of a conversation already. “Marge, dear, I thought I’d made it very clear ages ago that this isn’t at all in your best interests-”

“Oh yes, well,” Marge simpers so sweetly it can only be false, “you know, you always did have an awful lot to say but I’m just having the darndest time spotting what it is that’s got all the rest of you ladies in such a tizzy about my friend Bucky here — and I reckon these days no one on the block knows John better than I do, don’t you think? If I don’t see anything wrong here, why should anyone else?”

“Of course, Marge,” Henrietta smiles – and she does it so bitterly it can only be false. “Everyone’s perfectly aware of exactly how well you know Major Egan these days.”

John’s a terrible actor, can’t keep his tone neutral in the least when he spits back, “And I’m sure you’ve been keeping yourself pretty damn busy gettin’ the word out about it, haven’t you?”

“Don’t be rude, Major, it’s unbecoming and only digs your grave further,” Henrietta sniffs. John’s fingers itch again for that missing pistol. “In the neighborhood is one thing, I suppose, but this – in public? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Marge puts on the same exact haughty tone to huff, “Well clearly we’re not,” and god John could just kiss her, audience or no audience. “What’s so wrong about it? Nothing to be ashamed of we’re just gettin’ groceries, and if you don’t mind we’d like to finish up in time to get everything put away before supper needs starting so-”

“Marge!” Henrietta yelps when Marge nearly closes her fingers in the window without any further warning. “Jesus. You know, you’re really somethin’ else, Marge Cleven,” she huffs but she does at least storm off back to her own car then, shooting a couple of glares at them over her shoulder — once on her way to her spot, and then again when she backs out and pulls away with a squeal of her tires.

“So. My pistol?” John huffs and uses the excuse of parking just so between the lines to keep from looking over at Marge to gauge her reaction, certain it’s nothing but wary disapproval.

“If you wanna use that damn thing, I hid it under the yellow rose bush on the side of the house once you threw it down that day during your episode, and as far as I’m concerned you can fish it back outta there any time, and with my blessing.”

John turns to look at her askance but she isn’t even looking back at him to see, in fact she’s already out of the car and practically stomping across the parking lot. John scrambles after her when it’s clear she’s not waiting, so surprised he loses his grip on most of his anger on the way inside.

“We’re gettin’ outta here, John, I promise,” she mutters to him as they whizz down aisle after aisle, Marge’s low heels clacking noisily on the tile, and she pointedly ignores every stare they catch as they go. “I’m sure I can come up with somethin’ Gale will go for this time. We’ll talk about it again tonight after supper, make him see reason.”

John hums, accidentally catches and locks eyes with the shop owner standing up at the front and watching them turn the end of an aisle, one hand tucked below the checkout counter and an expression on his face that puts John’s hackles up. He mutters, “Better come up with somethin’ quick,” out of the side of his mouth and forces himself not to look back at the glare still burning between his shoulder blades. “Don’t think we’re makin’ any friends around here and I also don’t think any of us want to give Walker another excuse to throw me in a cell.”

“No one’s getting arrested,” Marge hisses. She drops a sack of flour in the buggy with a thud and marches onward, John following at her heels. “We’re friends-”

“Yeah Marge, we’ve made that pretty damn clear, and since I moved in all our neighbors got a pretty strong case against us for adultery because of it!” he hisses back. “And now here we are provin’ it to everyone in town-”

“Shh!” Marge elbows him in the stomach just in time for another woman to round the corner, too caught up in wiping something sticky off her toddler’s face to bother with looking at them. “It’s fine,” Marge continues in an undertone when they’re alone again. “No one enforces those laws anyway, and it’s hardly going to come up in a divorce hearing, is it? We’ll be long gone soon enough, just stick it out. We’re alright.”

John has ironclad evidence that yes people absolutely do and he’s already got one strike against him to nearly guarantee some jail time should he be dragged out for it again, but…Marge already knows that, to an extent. She’d called the station last time, after all, hadn’t she? Told Walker that he had it all wrong, that she wasn’t afraid of John Egan at all, that they’re friends and she won’t take kindly to anyone saying otherwise. That has to be enough to prevent him getting dragged away again for all the same accusations, right?

John sighs and lets it go, just follows Marge’s directions to pick up what she wants and keeps a wary eye on the owner whenever he’s in sight. When it comes time to pay John slots himself neatly between Marge and the owner’s glare under the guise of helping get the sacks loaded up properly in the cart, a tidy double column of rustling brown paper bags. Marge pays, and John spares one final glance over his shoulder as the cashier counts out her change.

The owner’s still watching them, of course, and he’s still got one hand conspicuously below the counter. John can’t say he sees the logic in shooting somebody for daring to walk into his establishment to spend money just because he doesn’t like who that someone’s walking around with, but he’s also seen men get shot for absolutely no reason at all so he’s not taking any chances.

Marge doesn’t protest when he chivvies her out as quick as they can go and he only relaxes with a shuddering exhale when they’re loaded up and back on the road, halfway to home. She puts a hand on his knee, silent support and apology, and John lifts it to press a kiss to the back of her palm.

“We’re gettin’ out,” she promises him again, her voice low.

“Whatever we do, we gotta go somewhere no one’ll ask questions they shouldn’t,” John tells her as he puts her hand back down on his knee. “It has to be somewhere big, no one cares what anyone else is doing in a city. Even out in the middle of nowhere miles away from anyone there’s still neighbors to get nosy and go poking around-”

“Oh honey, I know,” Marge sighs. “Why do you think we left Casper? Just leave it to me, I’ll figure something out.”

Chicago

It’s snowing the morning they arrive at their new house, Gale driving the moving truck and John and Marge following behind him in John’s car. It’s not in a suburb per se, but it’s not quite in the city either. The house sits in a little neighborhood just on the cusp of both, a sort of in-between space where they could get the bus or train into town but their cars will be handier. It’s quiet but not so quiet they have to worry about causing a stir, and this way they can have a flower garden again, and a garage for John’s equipment, a new workbench.

There’s a high school nearby in search of a shop teacher, and plenty of offices looking for a secretary, and plenty of factory or railway work for Gale, or there’s always a physics degree — or any other course! — at the University of Chicago if he wants that instead.

It’s got nearly everything attractive about New York without being New York – anonymity, and freedom, options, the opportunity to live their lives on their terms. If they play their cards right they could live there for the rest of their lives, no more moving around, no more shuffling. They can make a good life in Chicago, go out dancing on Saturday nights and make friends, maybe even with other people like them, people are always talking about how the cities are full of people living in ways God never intended, and, well, now that’s them too and maybe there’s-

“No.”

“Gale-”

“No, Marge,” Gale snaps; John’s been leaning against the mantel for Marge’s pitch but at that he twists at the waist and raises an eyebrow when he catches sight of the black look on Gale’s face.

“Buck?”

“Not Chicago.”

John glances at Marge but apparently this just so happens to be a rare occasion in which she looks as lost as he feels, the vehemence of Gale’s response a mystery for both of them.

“Honey you seemed fine when we went for the weekend this summer, what’s wrong with it?”

Gale chews on the inside of his cheek so hard his teeth cut a visible dent in the healthy curve of it, and for a few long moments it seems that’s all he’s going to offer up by way of an answer. Abruptly, though, he cuts another look at John and mutters, surly and accusatory, “Bucky doesn’t want to go to Chicago either.”

“Hey-”

“John?”

John gives Gale an ugly look of his own but fine, if he’s going to be made out to be the bad guy then he’ll be it. Whatever’s got Gale in a twist can be figured out later when he finds whatever words he’s chewing on to explain himself – or maybe he won’t, it’s not as if he’s all that good at it, and since the talk about moving began in earnest he’s been getting sorer and sorer about it any time it’s mentioned. For now, John lets himself be made the villain and sighs, turns his face into his hand propped up by his elbow on the mantel to rub the pad of his thumb against a headache starting up between his brows.

“I don’t want to move to Chicago, Margie. Don’t know Buck’s reasons but I’ve got my own.”

“Well you were the one sayin’ just this afternoon-“

“I know what I said!” John takes a deep breath in; he’d caught Gale’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flinch out of the corner of his eye even though he’d barely even raised his voice. “I know, Margie, but we can still come up with something else, you told me not to worry so much about it-“

“I know but — Gale don’t-“ Marge pleads but Gale’s already up and striding from the room with some muttered excuse about needing air.

“I’ll go with him, bring him back,” John sighs, and before Marge can protest he’s slid past her with a brush of his hand against hers to follow Gale out the front door he’d left standing wide open behind him, no doubt expecting to be followed.

John keeps his distance, lopes along with his hands in his pockets and Gale’s long lean figure fixed in his sights, 12 o’clock level. He’s walking with some purpose but not rushing. He’s making it perfectly easy to follow him so John does, down their street and the next without falter and without doing anything to close the distance between them.

At the third junction Gale tosses a sighing, “Go home, John,” over his shoulder without breaking stride. Gonna be a long one, then.

“Nah, I like the view better from back here, thanks.”

Gale’s shoulders slump with what looks like another sigh but the sound of it is lost to the evening breeze and the scuff of John’s shoes on the pavement. They march on and John keeps his eyes on Gale. He doesn’t ask where they’re going, it doesn’t matter — following Gale is easy as breathing and, despite having never had the opportunity to test it, John knows without a doubt that he’d let Gale lead him into something far worse than whatever they can find around here, if he needed to. What’s a brisk evening walk through suburbia in the face of the knowledge he wouldn’t have ever hesitated to follow Gale straight into a dogfight, or a stalag, or the neverending march ever-deeper behind enemy lines if he’d had the chance?

They walk, Gale in front and John behind, and unlike John’s walks around the block that follow something of a loop that’ll bring him back home, they just keep going, forward, always forward, until abruptly Gale steps aside through a narrow turnstile gate and John follows him a few moments later into something of a park. It’s entirely too manicured, clearly new and shiny and a little too perfect to seem comfortable on first blush. But there’s a large pond some dozen yards away overgrown at the edges and rippling with a few ducks keeping company with a pair of swans gliding across the placid surface; the little ducks occasionally dunk forward with their feet in the air to chase their dinner while the swans look over everything with a haughty grace, and the grass is soft and cool and dry when John sits down next to Gale waiting for him on the gentle downward slope towards the water, just a couple of yards off the footpath.

It’s too early in the evening and almost too late in the year for fireflies but the setting sun is still burnishing everything sweetly golden and the breeze brings with it a chill that wasn’t there even last week — as good an excuse as any to press against Gale’s side from shoulder to ankle.

They breathe in time, automatic process synchronizing as they sit there in the quiet, Gale with his feet planted and wrists draped almost daintily over his bent knees and John slumped beside him, soles of his shoes facing each other and his knees splayed, knuckles resting on the grass between his thighs. John reckons their hearts are probably going to start beating together soon too, if they aren’t already.

“Wish I’d had you then, Buck.” It’s nothing he hasn’t said before, but it strikes him now just as strongly as the last time he’d said it, too vulnerable and yet Gale hadn’t flinched away then, and he doesn’t now. “Don’t want to do any of the rest of it without you.”

“I know. Y’won’t have to.” Gale’s fingers twitch in the air between his bent knees like he’s got the urge to roll a cigarette, or a pair of dice.

John nods, shoulders bobbing with the motion. He always does it with his whole body, he knows, but Gale doesn’t seem to mind the jostling of John’s shoulder against his so he doesn’t try not to. Instead, he tries to think of something tactful to say, something that won’t lead to Gale shutting him out between one maybe-matched heartbeat and the next, but tact has never been his strong suit and after a few false starts — parted lips and preparatory inhales that all send Gale’s shoulders a little further up around his ears — he gives up.

“I know you hate it, but we’ve got to get this place behind us if we’re really doing this.” He takes a risk, a leap, and leans his shoulder harder into Gale’s to better hide the way he raises a hand from the grass to stroke the back of his index finger along the shapely contour of Gale’s forearm, his loose sleeve soft and warm with his body heat under the touch. “We’re riding this out until whatever kind of end comes, aren’t we?”

Gale swallows, thick and like he needs to sniffle but he won’t. “Yeah.” He turns his hand over, palm up towards the sky and his so-delicate wrist draped and extended over the highest point of his knee. John obliges him, brushes the tip of his finger along the longest line criss-crossing the meat of his palm, outer edge to the crevice at the base of his index finger and back. John strokes it a few times back and forth, back and forth, warm dry skin and the twitch of Gale’s fingers towards him without quite touching. After a few more passes he hooks his fingertip under his starched cuff instead to tug it down and expose pale green-blue veins under skin so thin John can see the thudding of Gale’s pulse through it.

He was right, his own heart is thumping along in lockstep.

“The longer we stay here the sooner it all ends,” John tells him, thumb brushing sweetly against that faint drumbeat of a pulse. The only thing that keeps him from turning his head to chase the same where it beats stronger under Gale’s jaw with nose and mouth is the sound of voices on the road outside the park, young high ones that call out to each other over the whizz of bicycle tires. “I’m with you until whenever that comes, but now that I’ve been offered it I want to have more time than that. Buck.”

It’s John’s turn to swallow hard around a knot of things he can’t say. The first Buck, his first sweetheart before he even knew what a sweetheart could be…they’d been on borrowed time neither of them could’ve ever known to hold dear. He hadn’t gotten a goodbye, he’d just lost him, not to death or illness or an accident, nothing concrete he could blame, but instead to the cruel whims of people bigger and stronger than them who didn’t understand and hated them for it. He’s never going to see that boy again, he knows that, but he can try again now — in fact he hasn’t been given much of a choice. The last thing he thinks he could stand is if he suddenly lost it all over again, his sweetheart, sitting here beside him against all probability, dragged away like the first by something too strong and too big and too hateful to escape.

John curls his hand around Gale’s wrist and brings his limp hand up to himself, raises it so briefly to his mouth his lips barely brush the tender meat of his upturned palm. When he turns his head enough to meet Gale’s eyes he sees a reflection of his own quiet devastation, muted and translated through layers of his own losses, his own fears, but recognizable enough despite that.

The swans ruffle onto the bank of the pond with a few beats of their wide wings and John lets Gale take his hand back, faces forward again and drops his own hand back to the grass. The sun dips lower until their lengthening shadows abruptly disappear and only half the pond and its far bank are still coppery gold. 

They sit bathed in cool blue evening shade and only then does Gale murmur, “Wherever we go I want it to be the last.”

“Can’t guarantee that, Buck, you know that. But we’ll sure as hell try.”

Gale nods and asks, still watching the pond, “If you’re so worried about goin’ why’d you say no to Marge?”

John snorts and before he can think better of it he cuts Gale a glance out of the corner of his eye, his mouth twisting up in a smile around a teasing, “C’mon Buck — the Cubs?”

It’s not the reason, of course, but it startles Gale enough that he laughs, breathlessly fleeting but real, so it’s the answer he’s sticking with and it’ll just have to do. Gale leans into him for a moment, tilts his chin like he’s thinking of kissing him but turns the almost-motion into a glance over his shoulder instead, face close enough for John to count each of his sandy pale lashes.

“You trust me, John?” Gale asks, and he’s still so close and fuck but John loves him; Gale flicks a glance up at him through those pale lashes and it takes no thought at all to nod, struck dumb but he still has to answer. Gale does kiss him then, a swift ghosting peck that’s done and over so quickly John doesn’t even get to chase it before Gale’s looking forward again. “I’ll figure something out, I swear. Y’just gotta be patient, I’ll get us out of here in one piece.”

One day John wants to know why Gale’s so twisted up about this, why he drifts so far away when they try to talk about it. Marge has mused on it just once, something about how when they were kids Gale’s daddy was infamous for cutting and running any time a bill came due and it gave Gale some strong ideas about not quitting on anything to try to balance it out. John doesn’t know if that’s so, or if Gale would ever tell him one way or the other, or if he even knows what it is that gets him stuck, but for now it’s alright.

“You’re on the left,” John tells him instead of asking, leans his shoulder harder into Gale’s at his side, nudges him with his elbow. “You’re callin’ the shots here, Major. Just tell me where we’re going and I’ll do what I can to get us there.”

Gale nods and offers up another fleeting ghost of a smile. They sit there until the sun goes down and the streetlights click on and the last of the summer frogs are singing down by the edge of the water. They get up and walk home, as close to hand-in-hand as they can be with their shoulders brushing and knuckles rubbing every few steps. John catches a curious glance from a woman he doesn’t know standing in her front window to pull her curtains for the evening, and though the attention prickles between his shoulder blades he just offers her a quick wave on their way past.

—//—

Thursday, Early-Mid September

“Gale? You alright?”

Marge keeps her voice low, conscious of John asleep behind her. Gale’s been having a pretty good run lately — even if he still has nightmares more often than she’d like he hasn’t had to sit up and read or stare at the ceiling for weeks, he’s actually sleeping at night more than he’s not. Tonight she’s not sure which it is, if he’s managed to wake himself out of a nightmare or if he’s still waiting to fall into one, but either way she can feel his heart racing under her hand and he’s breathing conspicuously deep and even. If his eyes weren’t open, lids at half-mast and his gaze fixed unblinking on the ceiling, she’d think he was asleep after all for all he acknowledges her.

“Honey?”

John stirs at her back, sleeping lightly apparently, and Marge would curse except, selfish as it makes her feel, it’s sort of nice to have someone else there to turn to when Gale gets like this, same as it’s nice to have Gale help her when John shakes apart. It’s a give and take that neither of them seems to begrudge the other.

John is, however, typically less gentle about it than Marge would be on her own. He stirs again with more intent, clearly waking with a sharp inhale against the back of her neck, and when he’s lifted his head to take a look at Gale over her shoulder he just sighs. After a moment of watching Gale do nothing but stare at the ceiling and breathe like he’s still sleeping, John slides his arm away from Marge’s waist to raise his hand less than an inch away from Gale’s face and snap his fingers twice, one right after the other rapid-fire, loudly enough that the echo of it bounces back at them off the ceiling. Gale flinches and with that suddenly seems to remember how his muscles work well enough for a full-body jolt half a beat later.

If it’s less gentle than Marge’s methods it’s at least also more effective; Gale snarls and snatches up John’s wrist, though he comes back to himself enough to go still again before he can do anything that would hurt any of them. John’s hand stays limp in Gale’s white-knuckles fist save for a quick little wiggle of his fingers like he’s waving hello.

By way of explanation, John rasps, “Y’got stuck again, baby,” and he sounds like he’s half asleep again already. “Gimme it back and talk to Marge.”

Gale releases John’s wrist one stiff finger at a time but John doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, just waits patiently until he’s been fully released to tuck himself around Marge again with a sigh and go lax again, heavy and warm against her back as he drifts back off with a soft snore. He’s always so tired, Marge is glad he seems to sleep easier these days, too, though she doesn’t exactly have the same frame of reference for that as she does for Gale, of course.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Gale whispers. He’s still laying flat on his back but he’s at least turned his face towards her enough to meet her eyes. “Just thinkin’. Go back to sleep.”

“About what?”

Gale must be almost as exhausted as John; instead of telling her again not to worry about it and go back to sleep he swallows and wets his lips and whispers, “Things at work are gettin’ rougher, and…I’m figuring out a plan I reckon you and Bucky could go along with. We oughta go before winter, right?”

“Yeah, we should,” she whispers and tries to keep her voice as casual as anything. “Neither of you does well in the cold, we should be settled somewhere before it sets in.”

Gale nods and looks up at the ceiling again to watch whatever mysterious thing is happening behind his eyes, some unknown play or memory, a flickering film reel with an audience of one.

His heart slows gradually, so gradually Marge hardly notices it until she realizes it’s nearly as slow as her own pulse in her ear pressed to the pillow. She draws little nonsense shapes against his skin with a fingernail and watches his lashes flutter as he fights to stay awake and, eventually, loses. Marge strokes his chest for a while, times it with the puffs of John’s soft snoring into her hair, and eventually she drifts off with them.

Her neck and hips are stiff come morning when she wakes in the exact same spot, but John promises her a massage to make up for pinning her between them and Gale tells her between goodbye kisses on his way out the door that he hopes he’ll have some good news for them that afternoon, so things could certainly be worse.

John makes good on his promise after they’ve cleaned up from lunch, his hands warm and hard on what feels like every muscle in her back until she’s a puddle of relaxed limbs in their bed, and eventually it’s only the need to get supper going that coaxes her up and out of her dozing. 

John joins her in the kitchen as usual — more to have something to do rather than out of any real knack for cooking — and they’re working together in companionable quiet when Gale comes home. He’s pale and drawn as he has been for weeks now, always in need of some distraction and some time spent with one or both of them before he’ll get some color back in his cheeks, but Marge knows better by now than to ask him what’s wrong. He won’t say what’s going on at work to make him look like that (“I can handle it, sweetheart, don’t worry about me.”) but Marge suspects it’s not anything too much unlike the cold shoulder she’s getting just about everywhere she goes these days, or the reason John barely sticks his nose out the front door anymore if he can help it even as he chafes at locking himself away at the same time. Today, though, pale as he is there’s also something feverish in Gale’s eyes, a manic light that doesn’t match the grim set of his mouth as he steps inside and tells them hello so clearly something’s changed, though for better or worse remains to be seen.

“Hey. Y’okay Buck?” John asks. He’s sitting at the table shelling peas for supper but he hurries to tug the mess he’s making of it out of the way of the cream-colored paper packet Gale tosses at him that lands on the Formica with a hefty slap. 

“Boston.”

Marge abandons the washing up and hurries to dry her hands on her apron on her way to Gale’s side. She reaches up to press the back of her palm to his cheek flushed a deep splotchy red, tuts a little over the harried and longsuffering look he shoots her, and she only lets herself be distracted from checking him over when John’s finished wrestling open the envelope and stands up so quick his chair nearly topples over.

“Buck, this is from Harvard.”

“I know.”

Marge blinks at John blinking down at a letter he’s clutching in both hands, his chin ducked so low she can’t see the look on his face.

“You’ve been accepted to Harvard.”

“Uh-huh, seems that way.”

John’s unresisting when Marge snatches the letter out of his hands, he just steps around her to barrel across the kitchen to wrap Gale up in a hug so big and squeezing he picks him right up off the floor with it, but Marge only has eyes for the neatly printed letter in her hands, dated just a few days ago.

Dear Major Cleven,

After carefully reviewing your aptitude test and entrance essay, and having received your school transcripts and service record both further confirming your suitability, we are pleased to extend to you an offer of a place in our undergraduate program. All going well, you may join us for the Winter term commencing Monday January 13th, 1947-

“Gale Cleven you brilliant fucking sonuvabitch! And here you’ve been lettin’ me think you’re all looks huh? Gorgeous fuckin’ brain of yours — Harvard!”

“John-“ Marge calls because he’s still staggering around with Gale trapped in his arms, and Gale’s even starting to smile about it — looks to be on the verge of laughing — but the kitchen’s only so big and full of very breakable things, and John’s not watching where he’s going with Gale’s toes dangling a couple inches off the linoleum, “-put him down, you’re gonna break something!”

John obeys but only so he can raise both hands to Gale’s jaw and yank him into a kiss that looks like it hurts. Gale doesn’t complain, though, just kisses him right back with both hands curled into fists so tightly in the back of John’s shirt that Marge suspects she’ll have to iron out the creases before he tries wearing it again. She skims the rest of the letter, glances over the detailed outline of what else the envelope contains — class schedule, book lists, housing information, tuition fees with a description of what’s covered by his scholarship and what’s taken care of by the G.I. Bill (which, between the two, is very nearly all of it) and how to pay whatever remainder may exist after all the aid — but it can all wait at least long enough to celebrate. She drops the letter to the table and turns just in time to catch John breaking the kiss in order to plant one on the end of Gale’s nose and then another right in the middle of his forehead, big smacking ones that make Gale wrinkle his nose and bat at him half-heartedly as if that could ever be enough to get John to cut it out.

“You been workin’ on this for a while, huh?” John asks in between smaller, likely drier pecks to Gale’s cheeks and mouth; Marge tucks herself up nearly under one of Gale’s arms and hugs him around the middle, content for now to wait her turn. “Why didn’t you say?”

“Couple of weeks,” Gale mutters, “didn’t want to spoil it for ya ‘til I knew for sure.”

A couple of weeks. Marge tucks her face into his shoulder and wonders if John’s going to do the math and figure out that means Gale’s probably been working on this probably since just after they talked about New York, that he’s probably been dragging his feet since then at least in part because he knew he had something even better coming down the line.

Trust Gale to push himself, without a word to anyone, to do what needs doing in a way that ensures he’ll come out at the very top, no matter how unnecessary that is. Trust Gale Cleven to attend to the people he loves, as devoted a husband as he’s ever been, and do it without a fuss. Steady, sweet, tender Gale Cleven, the very same as the boy she’d fallen in love with a long time ago.

“How ‘bout it, Mrs Cleven?” Gale asks and Marge looks up to find him looking down at her with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, no doubt pink with the kisses John’s busily nipping and lipping against his ear. “Reckon you’d be okay in Boston?”

In all honesty it’s not exactly at the top of her list, but like hell is she ever going to admit that. A home can be made anywhere, and so long as it’s somewhere she can go with Gale and John then that’s where she’s going to make them one.

“Boston sounds great, Buck,” she smiles. “I’m so proud of you.” She doesn’t just mean for getting into Harvard, though of course that’s nothing to sneeze at. Gale smiles, a small thing, a little sad around the edges and it doesn’t quite reach the faraway look in his eyes, but it’s real, and he’s doing this for them. How could Marge ever complain?

Gale ducks in to kiss her much more gently than John had kissed him, and she basks in it as much as the excitement practically pouring off of John, so sudden and bright it throws into stark relief the creeping shadow of lethargy that’s been dogging his steps lately, such a gradual creeping in that she’s embarrassed to think she hadn’t even seen it coming on. This is John as he should be, she thinks, this is the John she’s glimpsed more and more since they settled into this together, the John who’s Bucky, who’s the life of the party, who knows no strangers, who sparks the kind of affection and respect she’d seen in Rosie that night in New York. It’s a side of him she desperately hopes to see more and more of once they’ve settled somewhere he can feel safe.

John breaks away from mauling Gale’s neck to quite literally sweep Marge off her feet next and she yelps in between peals of laughter as he swings her around with his arms around her waist.

“Bucky!” she cackles, not much of an admonishment but he puts her down anyway with a mischievous look in his eyes she knows all too well these days.

“Margie, I’ve had an idea,” he says once her feet are back on the linoleum where they belong.

“And what’s that?”

“I reckon our Buck deserves a reward — maybe even a special treat.”

Marge turns to look at Gale in the same moment John turns to do the same with an arm slung over her shoulders, her partner in crime for their favorite shared hobby. Gale looks between them with caution even as his mouth twitches around the toothpick he pops between his teeth to gnaw on, another smile threatening.

“I know that look,” he says and even if his smile is barely on his mouth it’s still heavy in his rasping voice, drawling and warm. “Don’t I get a say?”

Marge raises an eyebrow and asks, “You want one?” as dryly as she can manage.

Gale flicks his toothpick to the other corner of his mouth, wets his lips with a quick pink flash of tongue. “No, ma’am.”

“Alright then,” she smiles, and John squeezes her shoulders just once before he lets her go again and he’s off like a shot, thundering up the stairs — she presumes to go to get things set up, but when he’s in a mood like this there’s no telling.

In the quiet he leaves in his wake, Marge watches Gale take a deep breath and hold it, shoulders high around his ears with tension and the shove of his hands in his trouser pockets. He’s staring at the packet on the table, at his acceptance to Harvard, of all places, laying haphazardly amongst half-shelled peas and a stained tea towel John had been using to dry his hands periodically to keep them from going pruny.

“You alright?” she asks, nearly lost under a loud thump from upstairs.

“Sure, sweetheart. Will be,” Gale shrugs. His eyes don’t leave the mess on the dining table. “It’s a guarantee now, isn’t it? Four years in the same place, longer if I go for more than the one degree. Right? Four years.”

Marge keeps her voice low and stomps down the urge to go wrap Gale up in a hug that would likely only make him feel stifled like this. “That’s right. Four years at least, but I’m sure it’ll be more, whether you do a Masters or not. Just wait and see, we’ll get it right this time. I can feel it.”

Gale nods slowly, hums low in his throat. He flicks his toothpick back to the side it had started on, flicks a glance at her out of the corner of his eye in the same half a second. He looks tired; the late night last night after weeks of uncertainty must be catching up to him, but he just stands there in the middle of the kitchen, still on his feet after a full day of the same at the plant, and he stares at the table, and he gnaws on his toothpick.

Marge waits, she’s always willing to wait for him however he needs her to, and this time, as always, he rewards her patience.

“It’s gotta be fast now that we know. Overheard some fellas talking at work, think more people than just the neighbors are gettin’ the wrong idea about John bein’ here with us.”

“As in they’ve got all the right ideas?”

Gale’s toothpick snaps in half and he turns to pluck one half out with his fingers, spits the other into the sink, plucks a splinter off his tongue and rinses it all down the drain.

“Somethin’ like that.”

“I know.”

Gale nods, keeps his back to her but in the window starting to darken with the coming evening she can see the pale smudge of his reflection. Winter’s coming on; though the weather hasn’t turned just yet, the nights are getting longer, and Marge hopes they find somewhere in Boston with a nice hearth for Gale to tuck himself up close to again until spring frees him. Maybe this year, now that they have him, John will be able to sit there and keep him company around the fire, if Gale will allow someone to get through to him when he retreats so far in himself as he did last winter. And maybe he won’t, maybe he’ll sit there staring into the flames and not moving at all no matter what goes on around him except to throw another log on when it gets too low, but either way they’ll both be better off together than they were apart last year.

“I’ve been thinkin’ of ways we could do it, a story to give when we get there so we don’t look so strange — buy us some time.”

There’s another thump from upstairs; Marge keeps her gaze fixed on Gale’s stiff shoulders, his white-knuckle grip on the edge of the sink that she can just barely see past his hip.

“I’m sure it’s a good one, whatever you’re thinkin’,” she hedges when Gale doesn’t go on. “You’re gonna be able to keep us safe, Gale, I know it. You’re so good to us.”

He turns around at that, and the agony on his face is so raw Marge’s feet are moving before she’s even consciously decided to go to him, to cup his cheeks in both hands and stroke her thumbs against his scars, to pull him down for a sweet kiss full of tender passion like they’d shared at the altar and too many times to count since, a kiss that makes him whimper and wrap strong arms around her waist tight enough to ache.

“Shh, I mean it,” she tells him, whispering against his trembling mouth, no splinters left, just soft flesh and a shaking exhale warming her lips. “I mean it, you’re such a good man, Gale. I’m so proud to be your wife, and you’ve kept every promise you ever made me. You hear me?”

She thinks of their vows, fidelity and love and protection and nothing but death itself to ever come between them. Some — most, maybe even all, maybe even Gale — would say he’s broken the first and last so thoroughly there’d be no recovering them even if he wanted to. Marge, of course, heartily disagrees. She shushes him again and tilts her head to tuck his into her shoulder where he nestles in with a deep inhale, a long sigh that warms her collar and the side of her throat.

Eventually, after another thump from upstairs and when Marge has worked her fingers through every bit of his hair that she can reach to scratch her nails lightly over his scalp to soothe him, Gale confesses, “I don’t know why I can’t be happier about this.”

Marge ignores the cold pit in her stomach and the sudden thump of her heart to ask, “Happier about what?”

“Movin’ somewhere better for the two of you.”

Her heart slows again and she swallows to remind her stomach where it ought to be instead of trying to climb up her throat. She didn’t think Gale was having second thoughts about them being with John, but there are rare occasions where she doesn’t know what’s going on in his mind. Stranger things have happened.

“It’s alright if you can’t figure it out, Gale. I think Bucky’s gonna be happy enough for all three of us, if you need to borrow some for a while.”

Gale huffs at that and she feels the shape of his smile on his mouth when he presses it to her jaw. “Reckon so.” There’s more, she can feel it somehow in each careful kiss he presses to her throat, and after a few more he goes on, “He’s already perking up, huh? What’d you say about him before – like a big dog wagging his tail?”

Marge snorts as she nods, looks up at the ceiling overhead as if that could help her figure out the source of yet another dull thump. “What in the world is he doing up there?” she huffs, still half-smiling, and Gale’s amused hum echoes through her ribcage like it’s her lungs giving him the breath to do it.

“If I were a betting man,” he breathes against the sensitive spot just below her ear that always makes her shiver, “I’d bet he’s getting a head start on packing. Finally got his orders to move, so he’s moving. You know he likes it when I give him something clear to follow.”

“You alright with that, him getting started already?” she asks.

His hands tighten on her waist, thumbs nearly touching across her stomach, but Gale’s saved from answering at the last moment by the clatter of John tumbling down the stairs and bursting back into the kitchen to collide with her back, long arms wrapping around them both as he tucks in and slides his hands into Gale’s back pockets, gives him a sloppy kiss over her head.

“You two lovebirds gonna come upstairs or what? Or are we doing this right here? I can go get the H-R from the nightstand–”

“We’ll go upstairs, but we can’t get so distracted we forget to come back down for supper, Bucky,” Marge chides even as she leans back to kiss whatever part of John she can reach like this, which ends up being the end of his chin.

She doesn’t like the way John avoids her eyes and the warning both, but she’s not going to push it when he’s feeling so good. Instead, she lets him herd her and Gale upstairs with wandering hands and aimless kisses dropped wherever on whoever, and when they get there they tumble into bed together as they’re becoming increasingly good at doing and remind each other without so many words – but still thoroughly and at length – exactly why they’ve got to protect what they’re building together at all costs.

Boston

Tuesday, Early October, 1946

“Mr Cleven? Uh…sir?”

Marge pokes her head out of the moving truck with the last of the boxes in her arms and spots the very nice young man who’d driven the truck for them standing there with a sheaf of papers and a pen in his hand, looking a little lost. She clambers down out of the truck, sets her box down on top of the last little pile of others to be taken inside, and steps up next to the boys standing together on the sidewalk with their hands on their hips staring up at their new townhouse, both clearly lost in thought.

“Honey,” she coaxes, tugging on a too-loose sleeve with the sudden vertiginous lurch of deja vu. “Think he’s talkin’ to you.”

“Huh? Oh-” John turns around at her coaxing and shakes himself out of wherever his head’s gone to smile at the kid in his nametagged coveralls. The patch reads ‘Bobby’; he looks sweet. “Sorry, gathering wool I guess. We all square?”

“Yes sir, just need you to sign off and I’ll get the truck back to the depot for you before end of business, save you another day’s charge.”

“How ‘bout that,” Gale hums, not quite smiling but warm. Marge nudges him gently with her elbow, gets a quick wink back, the quickest flutter of his lashes possible.

“You got it, and thanks for that,” John agrees easily. Marge doesn’t watch him sign but she listens carefully – not a single moment’s hesitation in the scribble of the pen, and just like that ‘John Cleven’ has agreed (on his own behalf as well as that of his wife and her ‘brother’, one Gale Egan) that everything’s in order. Marge tucks her smile into her palm, slings the other arm around John’s waist when he straightens up again beside her.

“Well.” Gale hums and stops, a full thought’s worth of words tucked neatly into the one.

“Well,” John echoes, but he’s never been nearly as economical as Gale so he goes on, “guess that’s it then. Home sweet home. Better get on inside, find out where all the linens ended up. Don’t know about you two but I’m pretty beat.”

“You two make up the beds, I’ll rustle up something for dinner,” Marge suggests and pretends like she doesn’t see the way John’s expression twists just a little. He doesn’t want to eat, she knows, but he doesn’t ever say it anymore, and he makes a point out of finishing whatever she puts in front of him, thanks her for it when he’s done, so he gets a pass, especially after all the stress of moving that’s got them all a little ragged around the edges.

“C’mon Bucky, daylight’s wasting,” Gale says and passes John a box, and then Marge, and finally takes the last one for himself. He heads inside, Marge behind him, but when she crosses the threshold she turns back to find John still standing on the sidewalk looking up at their windows, box in his hands and his arms hanging loose with it.

“John?” she calls, and though he doesn’t look at her she knows he’s heard her. “Come on, baby, let’s get settled in. Been a long day.”

“That’s the truth,” he agrees easily. He stares up at their windows for another long moment and then he’s shaking himself all over and loping up the stairs. He crowds her into their front hallway with a laugh tucked somewhere in the crooked corner of his mouth, in the creases around his smiling eyes.

“Go on, Mr Cleven,” she jerks her head towards the stairs and the sound of Gale already moving around overhead. “I’ll call you down when supper’s ready.”

John hesitates only long enough to duck down and peck her on the cheek before he takes the stairs two at a time. His eager crow of, “Buck, baby, doll, sweetheart c’mere, I got somethin’ for ya,” filters down the stairs after him and Marge smiles, shakes her head, at the distinctive echo of a smacking wet over-the-top kiss that follows it in the split second before one of the bedroom doors snaps shut.

The kitchen’s still all in boxes but they’d stopped for groceries while they’d waited for Bobby in the moving truck to catch up, and with only a bit of rummaging through carefully labelled boxes she digs out a couple pans and enough utensils to make a valiant attempt at a normal supper to keep them all on their routine as much as possible. They’ll have to eat it straight out of the pans huddled all together around the counter unless one of the boys remembers where they put the boxes of china in the midst of everything else, but that’s alright. She gets it all going until it just needs to simmer a while and leaves it there on the stove to set about at least organizing the piles of boxes in the front room even if they’ve got no energy to actually start unpacking any of them tonight.

It’s a nice house, she muses. Good bones to it, sturdy red brick with thick walls and neighbors only on one side, theirs the house at the very end of the long row of them, all connected and close to the street but with sectioned off back yards for each one. She’s assuming the boys have had the good sense to christen the bedroom that doesn’t share a wall with the neighbors, because the walls may be sturdy enough but she can still hear the distinctive creak of bed springs overhead and, when she stands still and listens for it, John babbling something that’s probably effusive compliments and pleas for more. Just a hunch.