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They’re mid-fuck when it happens.
John’s arms are bracketing Gale’s shoulders. Gale is on his back for a change. John leans down, his full length pressing deep in Gale’s body, kisses his cheek, and when he pulls back to look at him his face twists in alarm.
“Buck,” he says. Gale swallows around his leaden tongue. “Buck, sweetheart.”
Gale feels it coming. The full-bodied shivering.
This isn’t new territory, but it rarely happens like this. Usually, it’s when the weather sets its teeth to them, air and leaves turning crisp and cold. When the ground hardens. The sight of razor-wire, or a particularly strident mutt. John can coax him from it most times. Just as Gale can bring John back to him when he needs to- they’ve improved on it. They’ve had practice. Almost eighteen months of it, the greasy presence of the war slicking their civvy lives, slipping away bit by bit, but it still clings. Gale will turn his back to the sun on occasion, peaceful and content, and it catches him in the chest like a shot. John drinks. They handle it.
During sex isn’t new, either, but it happens blessedly less than they’d expected.
John begins to pull out. Today, Gale refuses defeat. He kicks the small of John’s back with his ankles, driving him further in.
“Buck,” John says. It comes out with a shudder at the new depth of their fuck, but he clenches his fists in the sheets, impressive resolve making his jaw tense. He moves a hand to the side of Gale’s face. “C’mon, it’s fine. Not gonna do this with you shaking.”
Gale almost laughs at the option. The chill is in his bones now- they still stick out something awful. “Why not?”
John stares at him. “Jesus, Buck.”
“Bucky,” Gale mimics, stern.
He reaches for John’s hips, using them as leverage to grind down onto his cock, stroking himself languidly and gasping for good measure. John’s head tips forward between his shoulders as he breathes. The longer John stays still rooted in him, the more Gale feels like it’s a losing battle, but he doesn’t want to give up and roll over. He doesn’t want John to see his exposed weakness, raw for probing, like he’s never getting back the thickness of his skin. It’s illogical, Gale knows. John’s seen it all before. He’s just sick of showing it. Gale thinks of harsh, clipped words- of zoning out, committing the beams raising the rotting, grey ceiling to memory. One, two, three- concentrating until he got it right. There were ten in total. He still remembers that now.
He rolls his hips down.
“C’mon, Major. Give me a fight.”
John holds Gale loose by the waist, and looks at him for a long time. Furrowed brows, eyes pinched and narrowed, and he looks so sad that Gale reconsiders the whole thing. He aches, chest heavy with an itch thoroughly unscratched.
“Alright,” he sighs. “Let’s just stop.”
John gnaws on the inside of his cheek, jaw clicking like he’s pushing his next words around with his tongue. Gale doesn’t notice his hands move at all, until they’re clasping each of his wrists. John lowers himself a little, enough for Gale to see the bitten edges of his soft lips, the tiny patch he missed shaving this morning. Gale’s heartbeat kicks up tempo. John’s face clouds over dark, something entirely unfamiliar moving in.
“Bucky-”
John speaks like he’s dusting off his rank. “Tell me to stop again.”
Gale swallows. He tests the strength of John’s hold. He isn’t going easy.
“Stop,” he says, quiet suddenly, and hoarse.
John pulls out of his body just a little. For an awful moment Gale thinks he’s actually stopping, before he changes his angle, fucks back in. Gale traps a groan behind his teeth.
“Say it again.”
He can’t quite breathe. He’s rock hard, leaking precum onto his stomach in a silvery smear.
“Stop,” he says, shifting his wrists, John holding onto them harder in response. He pulls back out, the drag hot, slick and long, the angle stretching Gale out and making him sweat. John thrusts back in. Gale moans loud. “Jesus, fuck, please, stop-”
John frees one of Gale’s wrists, and clamps a hand over his mouth.
“I will this time,” John whispers. “Just ask.”
Gale tries. The words are inaudible, swallowed by the work-rough skin of John’s palm.
“Goddamn,” John smiles down at him. “Well ain’t that just too bad?”
Gale makes a sound into John’s hand. Something needy, laced with real panic. He makes it again, louder, when John lets go of his other wrist to stroke Gale’s full cock, throat burning from the way the sound has nowhere to go. He can’t tell if he’s about to come or break apart. Both, he thinks, both, as John’s thumb slips over the wet slit, and Gale thrashes against him. John holds him down by the grip on his face, drags his hips back, then slams back in. Gale feels his release building already, coiling hot in the base of his spine. He bites down on John’s palm.
“Shit,” John hisses, snatching his hand back. Gale sucks in a sharp breath. “Jesus, you got some teeth on you.”
Gale’s heart is pounding. John is still working him absently in a loose fist; teasing, long pulls, and Gale’s bucking up into it and whining. Horrid, desperate sounds. There’s nowhere to go with John’s thick thighs grounding him, his cock still stretching him and hitting that spot inside him with torturous, mindless grinds. John dips down to kiss him, and Gale turns away. He doesn’t want this right now. Really doesn’t want this- to be kissed and held, to be pliant, called pretty, treated like a woman in a place far from home. He bats John’s hand away from his cock.
John frowns at him. “I don’t actually wanna hurt you.”
“Y’can’t have it both ways,” Gale glares. “Don’t treat me nice and do all that, too.”
“Well, why the hell not, Buck?” John sighs. He moves back, Gale groaning, trying to follow him down with his hips until John slides out of him. “Help me out here.”
Gale feels his nostrils flare. He’s fast going soft without the pressure inside him. Because it’s too much, he wants to say. Too similar, missing the damn point- never leaving questionable marks and telling him he takes it well. He doesn’t want to take it well. He’s still shivering.
“’M not some wife, Bucky,” is all he can say.
John’s leaning back on his haunches, eyeing Gale like he’s trying to solve something. Gale’s fingers twitch with the urge to reach up and touch the bare expanse of his chest. He digs his nails into his palms instead.
“Alright,” John says at length. He spits on his fingers, spreading Gale’s legs back open slowly and pressing two into his hole. Scissors, then crooks. Gale hums. It’s not much of a discomfort now, but as John pushes his thighs up, pulling the fingers out and easing his cock back inside him, Gale feels it burn just enough for the pretence to piece itself back together. “Who are you, then?”
He ghosts a hand back over Gale’s cock, two strokes, just enough to get him writhing, before moving it over to his left hip. Tickles gently, before digging his fingertips into the jut of the bone.
“Please,” Gale says.
He hadn’t begged before. He hadn’t pleaded. He’d gritted his teeth, thought of John, thought of that yawning stretch of golden land they might have had if they pushed through the cold. Toes numb and blackening in rotting boots, endless mud, wasted muscle, one two three- concentrate- ten toes. Twenty, with John’s. Gale counts them, still, sometimes. He does it now, peering around John’s body with his pulse in his throat. One, two, three- John bottoms out and Gale groans- one, two, three- John takes his jaw in hand.
“Look at me.”
Gale does. Gale’s jaw aches.
“Are you alright?” John says, softer. His touch is feather-light, cautious and forgiving.
Gale arches his back. Pretty, he’s been told, notches of his spine lifting off one by one, two three- each bone clicking with malnutrition, misuse, malleability. Kisses John gently. Slips his tongue inside. Rears back and spits.
“I won’t tell you anything,” he says.
John seems genuinely taken aback for a second. He wipes Gale’s spit from his eyes, sitting up slightly in a motion that rocks his hips further flush with him. The clouded look returns to John’s face. Gale could cry with relief. There’s a moment of suspension, gears turning, Gale breathing heavy and John going very, very still. Then he leans down, runs his fingers through Gale’s hair.
“We’ll see,” John says. He makes a fist, pulls.
Gale’s head is yanked back against the mattress, scalp stinging enough that it makes his eyes water. He hisses with the pain. Hesitates briefly, before kicking John hard in the back. He hears the wind get knocked out of him as he falls forward with the impact, the full length of his cock spearing Gale, hitting that spot inside him that makes his brain stop working. His mouth falls open in practiced quiet, a rush of caged air.
“Fuck,” John moans loudly.
Gale grinds his hips down, trying to get John to hit it again, but John pulls out just enough that it’s out of reach. Gale makes a mewling sort of noise. He wriggles downward, desperate to get fucked deep enough he can see it filling through his skin, but John stills him with another rough tug of his hair. He rights himself, gripping Gale’s hip with one hand, and with the other he makes the shape of a gun. Slips two fingers into Gale’s open mouth like that, the motion of his thumb like cocking a trigger. John plays nice for a moment, and as he fucks his fingers in and out slowly Gale can swear he tastes metal. Drool slides past them and down Gale’s chin.
“Beg,” John says. Gale shakes his head. His tongue flicks out, licks John’s fingerprints without thinking. John shoves the finger-gun into his mouth deeper, making Gale gag. “Beg.”
Gale bites down. John should’ve seen it coming, or perhaps he does but lets it happen anyway, because he keeps his fingers rigid between his lips. Copper floods Gale’s gums. He grabs John’s wrist and wrestles his hand back, blood and saliva connecting them in a fragile strand until it breaks.
“Never,” Gale growls.
John grabs at his arms again, pins him down, and Gale struggles to get away like he isn’t choking on his own sordid need. He twists against John, failing to pull out of his bruising grip, heels battering at the backs of John’s thighs, and still John fucks him through it. He hooks his feet around the insides of Gale’s ankles, and with the terrifying strength of his lower body alone he spreads Gale’s legs wider beneath him. John’s thrusts are messy as all hell. Hindered by Gale’s manic jerking- but every other one lands perfect, makes Gale arch and cry out in ways that sound entirely too euphoric.
They’re both sweating. Grunting and making laboured sounds, slick skin slipping and Gale’s sensitive cock rutting up on John’s stomach as he fucks him faster. He’s so close to coming he could cry. Gale’s vaguely aware that his mind is warring in two directions, grinding up into the erratic rocking of John’s hips and trembling with the violation of it at the same time. He wants to kiss John, open-mouthed, and with teeth. He howls instead. He gets one leg free and lands a particularly vicious kick to John’s ribs. John lets go of his wrists in shock, and Gale curls away from him, on the edge of escaping.
“Hey,” John says. “You want me to let go?”
Gale isn’t sure if he’s playing along anymore. If he’s breathless with exertion or panic, with the fast coming rate of his moans or his dry sobbing. He isn’t sure what to say. He goes with his gut, with the game; takes the opportunity and knees John hard enough to dislodge him completely. John slips out of him with a wince, and Gale begins to scrabble backward. He gets halfway off the bed when John grabs him. He fists a hand back in Gale’s hair, flipping him over, pressing the solid line of his body to Gale’s back.
“Hey,” he says again, close to the shell of Gale’s ear. Gale shudders. “You want out? You want out, you gotta say. How am I meant to know, huh?”
“Fuck you,” Gale says into the pillow.
He manages to fling his arm somewhere behind him, make contact with some fleshy, bony part of John that makes him hiss. Tears are pricking at Gale’s eyes, heart racing, neglected, leaking cock rubbing down on the bed sheets. He pushes his hips down into the friction; pushes his ass back against John’s crotch.
“Stop,” he whines. The word is still weird in his mouth. It dawns on him like a slow fever- it’s because he never asked for shit before, when he was cold and too thin and on foreign ground. “Stop.”
John’s already fingering him back open from behind. He’s got Vaseline from somewhere, the glide too smooth, but it makes Gale moan embarrassingly loud as John goes from two to three with ease. Gale fucks himself down on the bed. There’s static behind his eyes.
“Tell me about the missions,” John says, crooking his fingers, seeking, finding. Gale’s open, panting mouth is making a wet circle on the sheets. “How’d you do ’em? How’d you hit your targets?”
“Fuck you,” Gale says again. It’s tearing off at the end, ripping into a ragged whine as John pulls his fingers out.
“Last chance,” John says. Gale can feel the blunt head of his cock at his hole. He’s right on the edge. He might be crying, but everything’s so damp with sweat, sticky with precum and the gasping spit coming from his mouth, that he can’t quite tell if tears are falling. “'S it worth it? All those men?”
“John,” Gale croaks.
John pushes his cock deep inside him, draped over the shape of Gale’s spine. He gets his long fingers around the back of Gale’s neck, keeping him face-down. John holds him like that as he fucks in as far as he can go, the curls of his pubic hair scratching against Gale’s ass with every thrust. He’s barely pulling out. Just grinding himself further in. Gale’s making dying noises of pleasure with each movement. His cock trapped in the friction of his body and the bed, drooling precum and hot and heavy, twitches as his stomach clenches.
“Won’t tell you anythin’,” he garbles, muffled by cotton. His eyes are squeezed shut. “Fuck, John, right there- I won’t, I’ll never-”
Gale comes. It shocks through the backs of his teeth then down his spine. He makes a dreadful, devastated sound when it happens, thrusting down onto the mattress and back onto John’s cock, body jerking with seemingly no control.
“Jesus, Buck, I love you,” John groans into Gale’s hair. Gale whimpers. “I love you, it’s alright, fuck-”
He isn’t far behind. Gale thanks a God he’s not sure is there. If he is, he’s definitely looking away now.
Gale lies like a board as John pulls out. Arms at his sides, hands perfectly flat on the sheets. His cock is softening and uncomfortable where it’s still trapped, cum both wet and drying tacky in his pubic hair, on his stomach, on the bed. He breathes. He keeps his eyes shut.
His blood rushes in his ears. The clock on the wall ticks. Cum continues to dry. Gale lies stiff as a dead body.
The bed dips and shifts as John moves around behind him.
“Buck,” he says. Gale remains perfectly still. “Gale.”
“Mm,” Gale says.
He supposes he might be frightening John a little. He blinks his eyes open, tests the aching joints of his arms, pushes himself up slowly. He doesn’t look at John. He pulls on his pyjama pants, swipes at the worst of the cum on his stomach with the matching sleep shirt before tossing it aside. John stands and begins to follow him around the room.
“Buck, talk to me.”
“’M fine,” Gale says. His voice is very flat.
“Like hell,” John says. “I shouldn’t have-”
“Asked you to,” Gale says. His head feels almost like he’s flying, but not quite. Floating somewhere. Flying through soup. No blue skies.
“Buck,” John says.
Before Gale’s aware, John is wrapping his arms around his torso from behind, cool fingertips on Gale’s warm ribs, and Gale puts space between them so fast that he collides with their dresser, sending John back into the edge of the bed. Gale is suddenly not breathing at all. His pulse is throbbing at all soft points, thrumming its way out of his skin.
“Hey, Gale,” John is saying, hands up in surrender. He’s talking down a cadet with a gun, soothing a spooking horse. “We’ve stopped. We’ve stopped.”
Gale has this knowledge tucked under his ribs, but it isn’t breaking through to his brain. His skin has started to itch all over. He feels sick.
“Sorry,” he says to John, because it’s not his fault, but even as he’s saying it he’s pressing a hand to his mouth, stumbling toward their bathroom.
Gale collapses over the toilet and vomits bile. It burns his sinuses and makes his eyes water, and when he tries to breathe steady enough to make it stop it just starts over again. Keeps going even when his stomach must be empty, spasming through nothing, throat raw as he gags dry. His head is swimming. He’s not completely sure where he is, for a moment. His breath tastes metal. His lungs aren’t working right.
Gale goes over his training in his head, counts up from ten then back down, getting his breathing to gradually slow. He stays praying over the toilet until he’s sure that the sheer panic and the vomiting have stopped. Until he’s positive that there’s linoleum under his knees; three tiled walls and one smooth, pale and painted surrounding him. He counts down from ten and back up again, and leans back against the painted wall. John pushes the door open slowly and sits opposite him.
Gale looks at him for a long time. He’s sat in his underwear, broad chest dusted with sparse, dark hair. His big arms are wrapped easy around his knees. His curls flop over his forehead, sweated and sex-mussed, grown past regulation and falling into his kind eyes. Gale takes a deep breath. Wills his heart to stop pounding. John’s moustache has stayed after the war. It twitches upward along with his gentle smile as he offers Gale a cigarette.
Gale’s never met anybody like John. He’s so himself. Could never be anyone else. Gale takes the smoke with a shaking hand.
“Buck,” John says. Gale struggles to get the lighter to work. “You’re okay.”
“’M okay, Bucky,” Gale confirms. The damn thing won’t light. His hands are trembling too much.
“You want me to-”
“Said I’m fine,” Gale snaps. It cracks at the end. He drops the lighter, puts his head in his hands. “Fuck.”
“Gale,” John says, moving fast, and Gale backs himself into a corner.
“Don’t,” he croaks. “Don’t- John- Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Just don’t-”
“It’s alright. I’m over here,” John says.
Gale makes a strangled noise. He keeps his face buried in his hands, shielding his spilling emotions from the audience of the tiles. He swallows down a sob, then another, throat thick and hurting with the effort. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. It was all his idea. He has no clue why he’s crying at all, so he tries to contain it, gasping on broken breaths and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. John doesn’t come near him, as Gale shakes his way through the ugly breach of feeling. He drags in a torn, wet breath. Another, a little less harsh. By his sixth forced, measured, in-out of air he’s stopped crying, just sniffing and warm-faced with it, eyelashes sticky and eyes sore. He pulls his hands away when he smells smoke.
John’s lit the cigarette. He’s smoking it himself, but passes it to Gale when he sees him looking. Gale takes it again. Inhales so deep his lungs burn, then exhales. Repeat, again, repeat.
“You okay?” John says.
“Mm,” Gale considers. He doesn’t get close to an answer, so he doesn’t give one.
“Buck,” John fixes him with a serious look. “You put up a fight.”
Gale chokes. “I-”
“Buck,” John says, firm. Gale swallows.
Gale’s jaw clenches. He nods stiffly. His pulse returns to his fingers with a steady rhythm, chest searing less and less, and after a while he sighs. Moves closer to John, tentatively, determined. He finishes his cigarette down to the end and rests his head on John’s shoulder. Gale lets him run his fingers through his hair.
“You okay?” John says again.
The question is giving Gale a migraine. He lifts his head up to look at John, and instead of an answer, he says, “Just kiss me.”
John obliges. He cups Gale’s face with his hand and kisses him gently, then openly. Gale kisses him back, keeps his teeth in check, and tastes nothing but sweet, stale smoke.