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“We could do it, Buck.”
John’s whisper is, as ever, hardly much of one, but it doesn’t matter. The boys are too exhausted to wake up for anything less than guns firing in the yard, and as much as Gale wishes he could sleep too, he just can’t. He can’t.
“No, John. We can’t.”
It’s a cruelty, to be so pragmatic now of all times, but John doesn’t seem to care.
“It’d be so easy. So good.” Gale pretends like he can’t feel John’s hand slipping around his waist, tucking too easily underneath him on the other side. He’s getting so thin, but so is everyone. Winter is hard, food is harder, one of mankind’s oldest enemies. “We’d be all alone up there, just you and me.”
Against his better judgement, Gale fills in the last part of John’s constant refrain whenever he starts in on this again. “And the sheep?”
“Yeah.” John’s smile stretches oddly on a face no longer used to it. He presses his teeth to Gale’s forehead and puckers his lips to turn it into a kiss. “You, me, the sheep. Nice life, Buck.”
“Uh-huh.”
Gale doesn’t ask what he’s supposed to do about Marge in this fantasy and John doesn’t offer his own thoughts, if he’s had any. It’s always the same: they’ll get out of here, they’ll go home, they’ll get up into the mountains, somewhere boundless and free where no one will ever look at them again but each other. They’ll herd and they’ll ride and it’ll be enough, because it’ll be the two of them, just them and nothing else.
Gale hasn’t told the men yet that John’s finally cracked.
“Mountains’ll be green,” John mumbles, lips barely moving and eyes closed, exhausted, “summertime. You’n’me Buck. Just like this-” he squeezes Gale’s waist, kisses his forehead and breathing in deep like he doesn’t even notice how long it’s been since Gale was last able to stand washing his hair with water hardly warmer than ice, “-always.”
“Don’t count on it,” Gale whispers into the hollow of his throat. John falls asleep grinning, teeth cool and hard on Gale’s skin.
–//–
“We still on for it, Buck?” John asks, shivering and trying to look like he’s not as the train rattles and sways with them trapped inside, them and every other sorry soul who survived the march out of the stalag.
“Yeah, John. You and me, we’re on,” Gale breathes. He’s done fighting it, and what’s one more harmless illusion, huh? One more what-if that they’ll never see, but if it keeps John going then it’s worth indulging, isn’t it?
John can’t kiss him here in the middle of the shivering misery of everyone else, but he looks at Gale like he wants to and that’s good enough until they can steal one later, when everyone’s asleep.
–//–
“Go Buck, get outta here!”
He goes, he runs, and as he runs he clings so hard to this harebrained scheme of John’s that he leaves bloody claw marks in it, the fantasy worn so thin he hardly even knows what else to hope for besides John coming back to him to tell it to him again.
The two of them somewhere far above the world, answering only to each other. He’ll have to leave Marge. When he gets back to Thorpe Abbotts by some miracle, he writes her a letter saying as much and how sorry he is and how she deserves better than this, than him, warns her that she wouldn’t even recognize him to see him now anyway, he’s not the man she fell in love with and he’ll never be able to give her what she wants. It’s cowardly of him, to hope she’ll exhaust her anger and her hurt before he ever returns Stateside, and cowardly too of him to wait to send it until the day after John makes his way back to him, the letter like a talisman against the possibility that he somehow wouldn’t.
“We’re still on, John,” Gale tells him that night, voice pitched low in their darkened corner of the infirmary, John on a cot and Gale sitting beside him, curled over to press his mouth to the inside of John’s wrist, kissing the proof of his beating heart with every steady bump against his lips. “You, me, and the goddamn sheep.”
“I’ll take that bet,” John chuckles and he reaches across himself to stroke Gale’s hair, clean once again, and soft between his fingers. “You wanna climb up here? Tight fit, but we’ve had tighter.”
He does want to so he stands without a word and lays down where John makes room for him, potential blue tickets be damned. War’s almost done anyway, the hell are brass going to do about it now? They might as well be untouchable, and that’s a novel thing to be.
–//–
“C’mere Buck,” John calls. He’s laying in the grass with his hat resting lightly over his face, one arm behind his head and the other down at his side, hand patting the ground by his hip.
Gale settles down beside him and says, “Hey darlin’. Thought you were asleep.” The grass is soft and springy, wet from a quick rain shower at dawn but he doesn’t mind. “You alright?”
“Never better.”
Gale sets their shotgun down at his hip and rests his forearms over his bent knees. The flock is meandering at the bottom of this little rise they’re at the peak of. John’s hand creeps across the scant space between them until he can curl his fingers around Gale’s calf, wriggles his hand up under the leg of his jeans and holds on just above the top of his boot.
“We gotta move them this afternoon,” Gale reminds him. The breeze that ruffles the grass and his hair is soft, sweet with fresh growing things, clear mountain air.
“Sure.” John strokes his thumb back and forth slowly, skin to skin.
They lapse into easy silence again, just the rustle of the breeze and the occasional bleat from the flock below grazing peacefully. Gale watches the clouds scud along, wonders not for the first time and certainly not for the last if they’ll ever go up there again. Here, like this, he almost doesn’t miss it.
John’s thumb slows and then stops, his breathing slowing with it. Gale looks down at him, gently lifts John’s hat from his face to hook over his own knee so he can see him properly, dozing off, perfectly relaxed. He doesn’t stir when Gale strokes the back of his index finger against his forehead, or down his cheek. He traces the line of his nose with a fingertip, does the same to his lips, gently parted for steady, puffing exhales.
John sleeps on. He had a nightmare last night, kept him up until he’d given in and saddled up to come check on the flock at first light. Gale’s glad to see him sleeping now, happy to stand guard and make sure it stays restful. He’ll wake him in a little while, and they’ll move the sheep down the slope to the creek at the bottom of it for some water, take them on to the next grazing area a little closer to the cabin. Later, though. For now Gale just tucks his fingers into John’s unruly curls, longer than regulation would have ever allowed and in need of a trim the next time they think about it, and settles in for another quiet day on their mountain.