I was tagged by the amazing @swifty-fox (ages ago) and the loveliest @amiserableseriesofevents (a few days ago), and my words were RISK and GIVE. Had to cheat a little bit, and there's one blank, but here we go!!! R

“I ask because we sometimes conflate those things,” he says, as he always does when he tries to sound more neutral, less accusatory. His lips glisten faintly with moisture—the coffee instant, but at least the expensive kind. “But seduction is different from manipulation. It’s about drawing someone in. A lure. Romance, maybe sex.” He tilts his head slightly. “Manipulation is something else. It’s purposeful deception.”

I

“It’s not my fault.” “It’s not your fault,” Bucky repeats. “Good. More.” Another lash. This one lands across the back of Gale’s thigh. He jerks with a strangled sound—raw, involuntary. “None—fuck!” He almost folds in half with it, Curt’s belt biting deep into the skin on his wrists. “None of it.”

S

“Say it again.” “Green,” Gale whispers. “Bucky, please.” “Good boy,” Bucky says, voice low but clear. “Let’s go.”

K

Kandahar is still looser than Bagram. Maybe it’s the open horizon, shimmering with heat distortion, that makes it feel less claustrophobic, makes John feel a little lighter. There’s a Green Beans coffee shop squatting in a prefab unit, its faded sign half peeling from all the sun, the inside a weak imitation of Starbucks with burnt coffee and worn-out furniture. The PX is bigger than it needs to be, shelves overstocked like his mother’s pantry on Christmas morning—snacks, toiletries, cheap electronics, all arranged under the hum of fluorescent lights.

G

“Good morning,” John mumbles. “Morning?” Paul repeats, glancing over with a crooked smile, faint amusement pulling at the corner of his lip. “It’s past noon.” Christ, John thinks. Fuck. He runs a hand over his face, scrubbing leftover dreams from his eyes.

I

“I love you,” Gale says. 

V

🌫️

E

Everything closes in, a rush of gravity and colour. John doesn’t realise that he sways on his feet, that he searches for purchase with his free hand and doesn’t find it. He has never felt as dead and as alive at once before—not even when he was close to dying himself. And he was, multiple times; every time he gets in the cockpit, if you think about it. “Who else?” he asks, his voice stripped down, automatic. It feels important to know, even though it doesn’t matter. How can it be both—so crucial and meaningless at once? “Most of the starting lineup.”

Behind the blindfold, Gale shuts his eyes so tightly it hurts. His feet are unsure on the ground, but he has to remember he’s safe here. He’s safe with Bucky, and he needs this—without knowing exactly why.

“The—” he tries. God, he might cry. “The flight.”

Behind him, the subtle sound of a belt unbuckling, the slide of leather through denim loops.

“What flight?” “The…” He swallows. “The day of the crash. The crash that killed him. The day I—"

He can’t. He fucking can’t. He shakes his head, nods, shakes his head again. Bucky steadies him with a hand on Gale’s back again.

“Do you want me to do it, Buck?” he asks. “Do you really want me to punish you like that?” Gale opens his mouth and begs, a whole litany of pleas sliding off his tongue.

“Then I need to know what for,” Bucky says. “I won’t do it unless you tell me what happened.”

Gale didn’t know it could be like this.

Not with anyone. Not in any version of his life. Not in any corner of the universe, in any branch of reality and time. He didn’t know there existed a timeline where he wasn’t miserable, where he didn’t crash and burn—not just in the cockpit, but in every part of himself. A version of events where he didn’t die, over and over, in a hundred small, quiet ways.

They have sex again. They make love again. The shame of dealing with the plug makes Gale squirm, body flushed and wrung out but still aching for more. John fucks him through it—through the tremble of it, through the oversensitivity of it, through the sharp little whimpers caught at the back of Gale’s throat. One hand pressed firmly over Gale’s mouth, the other gripping the nape of his neck, John takes what’s his.

Afterward, they lie tangled in Gale’s bed, limbs loose and boneless. The sheets smell like boyhood nostalgia and adult sin.

Gale sighs and calls John “Bucky”, and John smiles and calls Gale “Buck”.

And John has never been more aware of the heartbreak waiting for them at the end of this, never more aware of how much they’ll both suffer for it— —and never more unable to stop.

I'm back. One (1) engagement, one (1) cancer scare and one (1) promotion later, I'm back. 

Thank you so, so much to @stereobone @weimarweekly @amiserableseriesofevents @reallylilyreally @irregularcollapse @soliloquy-dawn for remembering me even when I forget myself...

He closes the door behind him but doesn’t even think to lock it. Bracing both his hands on the marble counter, he faces himself in the mirror—a silent duel between his two confused selves. Bucky and John Egan. One breathes in, and the other breathes out. Oh, John knows the science of this all too well: the comedown, the chemical ebb. But knowing doesn’t stop it. Knowing doesn’t curb the feeling like John’s just hit an air pocket, like he’s still falling—right up until he realizes, not with a dramatic thud but only a breathless little whoosh of skin against tile, that he’s on the bathroom floor. He exhales, eyes half-lidded. This isn’t something a rum-raisin praline and a glass of orange juice—his usual post-scene go-to’s—can fix. There wasn’t even a scene. There was just Gale. Undefended. Unarmoured. So painfully John’s it’s utterly gutting. It puts John in a deadlock of an impossible situation. It’s the happiest he’s ever been, and he knows it won’t last. It shouldn’t. Any utopia built on a lie is still a lie, just better decorated. “Bucky?” John blinks. Looks up. Gale is standing in the doorway, a beloved silhouette backlit buttergold by the bedroom lamp. He’s in nothing but boxers and one of John’s T-shirts, worn loose, the hem skimming his thighs. His knees are fine-boned and pale, blond hair on his calves catching the light like thread. John swallows. “Bucky. Are you okay?”

“A’ight, Buck,” Bucky’s shifting his weight from one foot to another. His eyes on Gale, his arms folded. “Touch yourself.”

Gale hesitates—reluctant, unsure, suspended between two selves: the one in the mirror and the one in the room. Gale isn’t sure which one he’s looking at and which one is looking back at him. "How?" Gale’s reflection asks hoarsely. "How you’d like to be touched," Bucky says, and it strikes like a match on dry tinder. It sets Gale ablaze, overtakes him. First comes the sound, then the full blow—the stinging pain, at once cold and burning—when he strikes himself across the face.

Tagged by @swifty-fox and I just wanted to say thank you for not giving up on me even though I've been SO FUCKING ABSENT.

Also, to everyone else who's tagged me in stuff lately - thank you, and I love you, and I will catch up soon. I just have a caseload of 30+ trauma patients and, frankly, can't breathe.

John wakes up slow, weighted, still drunk on alcohol and too much sleep. He rubs a hand over his chest—prickly with folliculitis, not the most poetic affliction, but inevitable in the heat and grit of the desert.

A fan creaks overhead, moving the air but not cooling it. Paul is already half-dressed, tying his boots.

“Good morning,” John mumbles.

“Morning?” Paul repeats, glancing over with a crooked smile, faint amusement pulling at the corner of his lip. “It’s past noon.”

Christ, John thinks. Fuck.

He runs a hand over his face, scrubbing leftover dreams from his eyes.

“We shouldn’t make more of this than what it was,” Paul says, and John knows he’s right. But he can’t help teasing anyway.

“Oh, it was pretty damn good,” he drawls. “How much more can we make it?”

Paul gives him a look—somewhere between indulgence and exasperation.

“You know it can’t really continue, Bucky,” he says. Lightly. “Not here.”

Tagging @weimarweekly , @blixabargelds , @wayrad , @onyxsboxes and my loveliest @amiserableseriesofevents

some time ago, I was tagged in the find the word game, which is my favourite thing ever. and i promise chapter 8 is coming together (very, very slowly - but it is). so.

from @swifty-fox loose, blink, peak, sweet

loose John notices Paul at the edge of the makeshift ball game but only speaks to him later, when they’re both loose-limbed and pleasantly tipsy, full from a dinner of shawarma and whatever passed for side dishes.

blink

“So,” John says, voice smooth, all innocent curiosity if you don’t want to hear the undertone. “You don’t play?”

Paul huffs a small laugh, blinks, then extends the cigarette between two fingers. “Not with them,” he says. They look at each other, and John can bet they’re both thinking of the same thing: the loud, raucous rabble of men inside. “Not my team.”

peak (oh, this is cheating...)

“How’d the game go yesterday?” John asks.

A pause. Too long. Red is weighing something. He sniffs into the receiver before speaking.

“Not as good as we thought,” he says.

A slow coil tightens in John’s gut. Not an alarm yet, but a warning.

from @amiserableseriesofevents hot, finger, gaze, fire

hot

Curt’s fingers find Gale’s wrist, hot and rough, insistent; his grip is firm, his laughter sharp, if a little rusty. They run through the yard, dew catching on the hems of their slacks, dress shoes slipping on the neatly trimmed carpet of green. They’ve done it so many times, and Gale was always the careful one. Even now—

finger

Gale bites. Licks the salt from his thumb. And then—because why not?—he licks his fingers, too.

gaze

Gale’s fingers tremble, ice-cold, as he tries to press the coil of the belt into John’s hand. He can’t meet his gaze.

 “What are you trying to do, Buck?” John croons. “Do you want me to punish you?”