not about angels

by pinenutpbj

Summary:

John's alive—brutally so, a stark contrast to the memory of a man torn in half on their wing. At that moment, death hadn't felt human. Blood frozen at altitude, turning remains to wax figures. Just a torso. Limbs. A uniform-clad form reduced to components.

But John is different. He is flesh and breath and unexpected softness.

/

They land in Algeria. John doesn’t touch Gale anymore.

Notes:

• For stereobone.

 

 

Gale steps from the fort into the heat lying in wait like a trap. 

The sun beats down mercilessly. It was nothing like the fog-shrouded East Anglia summer, where rain provided relief even in August. Nor was it like the hot days in Wyoming, where sagebrush released its scent at dusk and mountains drew cool air down into the valleys. The North African sun is relentless, its heat a constant pressure that seeps into his lungs with each breath.

The Telergma Airfield, little more than a hastily constructed landing strip on Algerian desert land, has become their temporary home, or a purgatory of sorts while they wait for the 12th Air Force to remember they exist and arrange transport back to England. 

The war rages elsewhere. Here, only tension hangs in the air, making it almost palpable. A silent, weighty scrutiny follows Gale as he surveys the damaged bombers.

Gale's forearms are burnished by the sun and oil. His undershirt clings to his skin, stiff with dried sweat. The yellowing neckline catches his attention whenever he glances down. It would take twice the effort to scrub it clean—if that would matter when they make it back to base.

Twenty yards out, his crew disperses across their makeshift camp. Some huddle around the radio, others buried in dog-eared novels or scribbling letters home. Benny and Brady flip cards so worn the suits are barely visible; they've been at it for hours, neither winning nor losing enough for either to quit.

“A whole day,” Hambone says, fingers rummaging through his K-ration for anything resembling food. “A whole day and not a damn word about when we're getting out of this hellhole.”

“Could be worse,” Croz offers, his voice perpetually cheerful despite the circumstances.

“Yeah? How?”

“At least here we can see the sky?”

The sky hangs dead and cloudless above them, its blue leached away by relentless heat.

“Yeah, too much of it,” Hambone mutters.

“Has anybody got anything to wash these cardboard cookies down with?” Crank holds out a crumbling biscuit. “My kingdom for something cold. Hell, I'd settle for something wet.”

“Water ration's not until fourteen hundred,” Jack checks his watch.

“Any word on when we're getting picked up?”

“They have priorities,” Jack says. “So should we. Training. Maintenance.”

“Relax, Jack.” Benny calls from his patch of shade. “Consider this our reward for not dying over Germany. They might give Buck a medal or something.”

An uncomfortable heat creeps up Gale's spine. He hadn't realized his words during the mission had carried across the interphone. Now in their eyes, he's the one who pulled them through impossible odds, making decisions that by all rights should have killed them. The thought clings to him like sweat.

“I need an aspirin, if they’re going to spare us anything,” he says, wrapping the deflection in a thin joke.

“I might trade my medal for a goddamn fan,” someone else says.

“If you got one.”

Crank leans back against their shelter. “You know what I miss? Ice cream. Big scoop of vanilla with chocolate sauce. The kind they serve at Maples back home.”

“If we're sharing dreams,” Croz joins in, “I'd kill for a steak.”

Someone groans and tells him to shut up. Gale's stomach turns at the thought of meat, with the memory of the mission still raw. He wants a toothpick between his teeth, but he's rationing those too now, saving them for when the pressure builds worse than this.

“I bet Brady here has something waiting for him back in civilization.”

Whistles follow, probably at the mere suggestion of soft skin and clean hair. Brady's face softens momentarily. “You mean what, a real shower?” The corner of his mouth twitches. “I dunno, maybe some ice cream if Crank is sharing.”

Crank's laugh is genuine if tired. He turns, scanning, until he finds the figure stretched nearby, absorbed in a battered paperback.

“What about you, Bucky?” he asks.

Gale follows their gaze to where John lies not far away, a novel braced across his chest. He shifts, moving the book just enough to watch them through half-closed eyes, conserving energy in the oppressive heat. “What about me?”

“What's the first thing you're gonna do when we get back?”

John hums, considering. He drapes the book over his face, then cushions his head on his forearms. 

Gale catches himself drawn to the casual movement. The way John's position stretches his arms, revealing dark hollows where sweat has collected in wiry hair. His red fez sits on his stomach, a ridiculous splash of color against desert monotony. His shoulders look massive, out of proportion with the absurd hat. One leg is crooked up, keeping secrets. The heft of his thighs press against worn shorts, exposing an inner patch of skin untouched by sun. Pale. Smooth.

John's alive—brutally so, a stark contrast to the memory of a man torn in half on their wing. At that moment, death hadn't felt human. Blood frozen at altitude, turning remains to wax figures. Just a torso. Limbs. A uniform-clad form reduced to components.

But John is different. He is flesh and breath and unexpected softness.

“Nothing special,” John says, voice noncommittal. “Count my blessings.”

The answer doesn't satisfy them. C'mon, Hambone presses. You telling us you don't have plans? Then he drops a woman's name, and the uproar swallows it before Gale can catch it. The gossip didn't hold much weight anyway, but a name is enough for them to toss around like it's something safe to make fun of.

“Hey, now,” someone says, “why don't we just ask Buck? Pretty sure Bucky tells him everything.”

The question isn't meant for Gale. He feels their eyes anyway, expectant, as if he has special insight into John. His jaw tightens around the phantom toothpick.

John moves the book from his face. His mouth curves into something too deliberate to be a smile. Gale knows him too well to miss the dismissal behind it.

“As if getting him to talk about my dirty secrets would be easier than asking me directly.”

The comment lands and sets everyone laughing. The subject changes naturally. John doesn't look at Gale once during the exchange, doesn't reach for him with that familiar gravitational pull that always drew them into orbit. Gale can't tell if John notices the absence, or worse—if he means for Gale to notice it.

 

 

 

Gale had let himself believe the notion that the Bucks talk about everything. Now, after the mission, the truth stands sharp as the desert horizon.

Last night, after the crew all settled down, Gale found John at the perimeter where camp bled into the wilderness. He stood there, his silhouette making a hard edge against the sky.

Gale approached and stood beside him, hands stuffed in pockets to hide their persistent tremor. Half a day since he'd wrestled the controls through a landing that should have killed him, and still his hands trembled. He wondered if they'd ever stop.

More unnerving was the silence from John. No ribbing about anything besides teasing him for missing the runway. No easy chatter, no arm slung around his shoulder. Nothing of John's body language that Gale read better than flight manuals. John had checked the crew, sure. A nod here, a word there—but Gale felt the invisible wall between them. It gave Gale the illusion that he was still trapped inside his battered fort, unable to touch solid ground.

“Does it hurt?” John asked suddenly.

Gale blinked, caught off-guard by the break in silence. He studied John's face for clues and found none.

“You’re bleeding.”

He made a small circling motion near his own forehead with his index finger. Gale raised his hand, found the spot, and his fingers came away slick with something dark.

“Don’t feel a thing,” he admitted, a numbness still clinging from the cockpit. “Bad?”

“Certainly doesn’t look good,” John clicked his tongue. “Have someone see about it, would ya?”

He jerked his head toward the camp. The gesture was familiar, but it felt stripped of something essential. No hovering, no fussing with iodine swabs, no proprietary grip on Gale's shoulders to march him to the medic. John stood with both hands anchored to his hips.

“Sure,” Gale says.

John nodded. The night air was cool against Gale's skin, a contrast to the punishing heat of the day that he shivered. Or maybe that was the wound. Maybe that was John's distance. They stood close enough that Gale could feel heat radiating off John's skin through the uniform, yet somehow John made the distance between them feel unbridgeable.

“You heard anything?” Gale tried, asking without asking the questions that mattered.

“Not really.” John's shrug was more muscle spasm than gesture. “Could take ages for anything to pass down here. Guess they figured that’s one way to keep the morale up.”

“John.”

“Just saying.”

John huffed out a sound that approximated good humor. He had his fingers laced behind his neck, elbows winged out, a posture that should have been relaxed. Instead it looked like he was bracing against something inside. Like he was trying to make himself bigger.

Gale had no hope for that. He felt small, and fragile. Marge's last letter sat folded in his breast pocket, its edges worn soft, weighing on him. He'd sought John out to tell him about the decision he'd made while stepping out from the fort: that he would write to Marge first thing when they returned, asking her not to wait for him anymore. He couldn't bear the thought of her heart breaking over news of him killed or MIA. How horrifying to realize that the promise of going home after the war had slipped through his fingers, and how undeserving he felt of such sentimental pain when he was still in one piece, still breathing.

He'd expected John to look at his face and translate all the things Gale couldn't say. But John kept his eyes fixed ahead, and what came finally was, “get that head looked at,” he said, letting his arms drop. “I'm not flying with a guy whose brains are leaking.”

Gale swallowed something thick in his throat. “Like you'd even notice, with all the hot air in your head,” he said.

A smile found its way back to John’s face, small yet solid. His hand twitched at his side. Gale waited, breath held, for the familiar weight of John's palm on his shoulder, his neck. It didn't come. At length, John just gave him a two-finger salute, then turned and walked back toward the camp.

Gale wanted to follow. Wanted to touch him, and realized he’d never learned how. Not like this. Not with intent. John made it look effortless, like adjusting a compass that Gale had never thought to calibrate himself. 

 

 

 

The mission is straightforward: transport medical supplies to the field hospital and check on the injured. The brass offer one of their few functioning jeeps, a generosity that might seem genuine if they needed those vehicles for anything else.

“We might as well swing by the local market while we're there,” John suggests as they load the last crate. “Pick up something besides those damned K-rations. Could trade our cigarettes for some real food.”

Gale observes his men, their forced optimism and amplified humor barely masking the fact that they're professionals hanging by threads that grow thinner with each mission. He’s seen some of them couldn’t get the cigarettes into their mouths with the tremor in their fingers. “Sure, Bucky,” he says.

“Think they have cold beer here?” Crank pauses from securing the tarp, wiping sweat with the back of his hand.

“Now you're being cruel,” Benny says dryly. “Next you'll be talking about ice cream and dames that speak English.”

They set out under the mid-afternoon sun, the jeep rattling over uneven terrain as Telergma recedes behind them. John drives with competent precision, both hands on the wheel. Gale turns his head slightly, noting the absence of the arm that usually hooks around the passenger seat, the accustomed lean against his shoulder. He observes John sidelong and sees his face at rest, only a sheen of sweat making his skin gleam, his expression neutral and closed. The usual animation and constant performance are gone, scrubbed away.

Gale wonders if anyone else has noticed what he missed. The thought makes him feel negligent.

“Penny for your thoughts,” John says without looking over.

Gale quickly averts his gaze. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“How we ended up here,” Gale says, though the words come out like truth. “In Africa, of all places.”

John scoffed. “Y’know they say it doesn’t rain for a single day here, this time of year.”

“Guess that’s supposed to make us feel better about being stuck here.”

“Yeah, Buck.” John's voice is flat, final, “like we don’t just go where they send us.” 

To that, Gale has nothing to add. The desert stretches around them, broken by rocky outcroppings and sparse vegetation. In the distance, the town materializes like a mirage, low buildings in earthen tones clustering around a hill.

They find the field hospital, a converted school with a Red Cross flag hanging limp in still air. The handover of supplies is efficient, the medics grateful but harried. The injured seem to be recovering, though some won't fly for at least a week. Others won't fly again at all.

“You okay?” Gale asks before getting back into the jeep. The question tastes acidic on his tongue, having simmered inside his mind for too long.

During their visit, John had spoken almost nothing unless necessary, a military green shadow hovering at Gale's back. Gale has never learned how to push. That had been John's trick. The arm around the shoulder, the squeeze at his jaw, the casual invasion of space that somehow made him feel acknowledged rather than intruded upon.

“Why wouldn't I be?” John turns toward him, eyes unreadable behind aviators.

“You seem off, is all,” Gale suggests. “Like there's something on your mind.”

John's laugh is dry and scraped. “Nah, I'm just passing time here, like everybody else.”

Passing time before heading back to Thorpe Abbotts, or before the next mission, though which one, Gale couldn't tell. John presses his lips, ending the conversation the way he always does when being pressed about himself, only never before when Gale was doing the pressing.

It turns out that the market sprawling through the village center is smaller than Gale imagined but vibrant with life and color. The air is thick with spices, cooking meat, and humanity pressed close,  overwhelming after the sterile buzz of engines and metallic reek of fear.

With an hour to spare, they trade cigarettes and chocolate for bread, dried fruit, nuts, and coffee that a merchant assures them is “almost as good as what you Americans drink.” John moves through the crowd, his halting French and pantomime drawing appreciative nods from vendors. Gale trails behind, feeling both conspicuous in uniform and invisible amid the bustle.

“Where'd you learn to haggle like that?” Gale asks, talking just to keep John engaged, their canvas bag now half-full.

“Spent summers with my grandparents.” John speaks over his shoulder. “The ladies at local markets would eat you alive if you didn't know how to bargain. Had to learn quick or go hungry.”

Hunger is one thing that Gale vividly remembers from his childhood. There’s no way around it when he thinks of Casper or his folks. He tries to envision a younger John, unburdened by war, strolling through Manitowoc markets in peacetime. The image is so at odds with the man he knows that it feels like glimpsing an alternate life.

John moves forward, leading without looking back, as if he doesn't need to check whether Gale is following. It's never occurred to Gale that, anywhere except the cockpit, he doesn't mind being led by John. He can't bring himself to examine what that means. For now, looking at John's back is easier than his face. The fabric of his uniform has darkened between his shoulder blades and lower back, dampness spreading when he bends or twists. Gale's mind flickers to bar nights, watching that sweat-dark fabric as John led girls to the dance floor, imagining the warmth and safety he offered as a temporary haven. Sometimes it makes Texas and East Anglia seem no different.

At one stall, an elderly man with a deeply lined face gestures them closer. He speaks rapidly to John, who listens before replying with what seems like a question. The old man smiles and disappears into the back of his stall.

“What's happening?” Gale asks.

“He has something special,” John explains. “Says it's from the, uh, Atlas Mountains. Think we can trade a chocolate bar and a compass for it.”

“You're assuming I'd give up my compass,” Gale says, already fishing it from his pocket.

John's mouth quirks up at one corner. “You'll give it up,” he says with such certainty that Gale feels a flutter in his chest.

The old man returns with a small clay pot sealed with wax. He removes the cap to reveal preserved lemons in honey, citrus tang cutting through the air. John extracts a slice and hands it to Gale, sticky sweetness lingering between their fingers. 

Their hands are filthy, but John's never been one for such concerns. He sucks the residue from his thumb, the knuckle disappearing between his lips. Gale's throat goes dry watching the casual gesture. It's not the first time he's caught himself staring. The way John moves through a room, commands attention without trying, touches people like it costs him nothing. A strangely satisfying warmth rises to his collar, into his mouth, as if he could taste wild honey on his own tongue. 

When he tastes the real thing, the promised tartness can't compare to the phantom sensation that preceded it.

“Worth the compass?” John asks.

“Yeah,” Gale manages. “Worth it.”

They've just finished trading their last cigarettes for grapes when a truck backfires at the far end of the square. The sound cracks through the air—sharp, sudden, wrong.

Around them, the market continues its lazy afternoon rhythm, but something has shifted. The truck engine coughs, then roars to life. A tethered donkey startles, rearing against its rope. The animal's panic spreads like wildfire; vendors shouting, crates tumbling as the donkey bolts through the narrow passages between stalls.

The chaos builds in waves. Voices rise, pottery crashes, and suddenly Gale can't distinguish the sounds from the memory of engines failing, metal screaming, the awful symphony of a fort coming apart in midair.

His hands begin to shake.

“John?” he calls, but his voice disappears into the noise. The crowd surges, pressing him back against a textile stall. A carpet unrolls across his boots, and he's trapped.

His breath comes short and quick. The yoke trembles in his hands. The controls slip. There's no bringing them back, no saving anyone—

“Buck!”

John's voice cuts through everything else. Gale blinks, and the market snaps back into focus. John appears around a corner, sees Gale immediately, and pushes through the crowd. 

At that moment, Gale feels like he's back at the officer's club—arriving late to a party already in full swing, debating whether to go in, when John had turned and locked eyes on him as if some internal compass always pointed him in the right direction. 

He remembers that day as the first time he’d ever had a focal point on the thing he’d been longing for yet has been missing in his whole life. He still doesn’t have a name for it.

“Gale,” John calls again. He looks pale and dehydrated, his face tight with raw panic. For the first time since they landed, he looks like himself, afraid and unguarded. 

A desperate craving shoots through Gale, sharp and sudden. It settles in his chest, paralyzing him. All he can do is stare at John.

“There you are,” John says through rapid breathing. “Where the hell did you go?”

The tantrum rushing in his voice cracks something inside Gale; hot, tight coils in his chest loosening. Now that he can move again, relief gives way to frustration. 

“I’ve been right here,” Gale says.

John looks at him, really looks at him, as if he can tell that Gale had forgotten for a moment where he was. Then his eyes catch on something on the ground. Grapes. Some are smashed, colorless pulp turned inside out.

In the silence between them, Gale manages to swallow the sudden sickness in his throat. “Not like you to lose track, Bucky,” he says.

John's expression slowly masks itself with nonchalance that doesn't reach his eyes. Finally, John nods briskly. “Yeah, well. Don't make a habit of disappearing on me.” His glance darts over Gale's face twice before settling somewhere behind it. “We should head back. We're already late.”

He turns on his heels before Gale can respond. They walk to the jeep without another word, their bag full, the space between them emptier than before. John starts the engine, the mechanical noise creating a barrier as effective as any wall.

 

 

 

By the time they return to base, dusk has begun to settle, and not long after Gale loses sight of John again. They're supposed to complete the aircraft inventory together, but John has vanished somewhere in the sprawling temporary base. The task sits unfinished, another responsibility suspended in the limbo of their unexpected stay.

Night falls quickly, the temperature plummeting with the sun. Most of the crew huddles around a small fire they've managed from scavenged wood, their voices carrying across the camp in sporadic bursts of laughter.

“You guys seen Bucky?” Gale asks.

Benny and Brady exchange glances before looking up at him. What they think is written plainly on their faces.

“Not since supper,” Benny offers finally. “You want me to find him?”

Gale waves him off. Brady frowns like he's got something to say, but his mouth settles into a tight line. Gale walks away because he doesn't need another person to remind him how he’s failing at his job. 

He wonders if John's aware of the unwritten rules here as he marches around the base, checking corners and shadows. They can't let the facade slip or the boys would start to notice the majors are falling apart at the seams. They don't get to act as they want to when people are counting on them to be the unquestionable leaders.

The farther he gets from the fire, the cooler and clearer the air feels, cooling his head somewhat. He wonders again if he should simply leave John alone. What's there to change if there isn't anything to begin with? Maybe he's been imagining significance where none exists. The eerie vastness of the desert seems to invite his father's words in. It’s all in his head, his father had told him. It was his thoughts that made him different, an easy target.

Looking back, maybe some of his father’s remarks weren’t personal after all.

He finds John sitting with his back against the wheels of a fort, one of those not going back to England, a silhouette facing away from the camp's center. A cigarette cherry floats in the darkness like a distant lighthouse. He might as well see a scene like that, Gale thinks, if their B-17s have struck at night.

Gale approaches, boots crunching on hard-packed earth, making himself known. The set of John's shoulders holds an unprecedented tension, a rigid pull inward that seems to drain the strength from Gale's legs. 

He settles beside John, leaving space between them wide enough for two more people.

“Some of the boys are wondering how we got through a dozen hells like this,” he says.

John snorts quietly. “You didn’t tell them that we’ve never seen it that bad?”

“And what good will that do them?”

John runs a hand through his hair, a lock escaping to his forehead. Gale can picture that hair grimy with desert dust and dried sweat like the rest of them.

“Right. Well,” when John speaks again, he speaks with a finality that sounds almost professional, “tell them I carried two rosaries and wore my sweater backwards. That’s how.”

Gale huffs a laugh despite himself. John picks at something on his sleeve, a loose thread or perhaps nothing at all. 

“You know,” he says, “you don’t have to keep checking on me.”

“Not what I’m doing, Bucky.” The denial comes automatically, ringing hollow to Gale's own ears.

Some of the men are hollering at the far end of the camp, a burst of laughter followed by good-natured jeering. Spirits are better at night without the heat hammering down. The racket makes Gale think of Curt, and he can tell it affects John the same way, because the next moment John says, “fly like an angel, huh?”

“John.”

They haven't heard anything confirmed about Curt's crew. It's predictable in its awful uncertainty. No reports, no details, just the empty space where dozens of men used to be. The brass might know more, but out here, they have only speculations that they know will soon become facts.

John tilts his head, blowing smoke away from Gale. Then he fishes something out of his pocket. The two-dollar bill with two corners bitten off, the edges worn soft from handling. 

“Shoulda given it to him,” he says, turning the bill over in his fingers.

“Come on, don’t talk like that.”

John goes quiet without putting up a fight. It’s worse now, with silence stretching between them, no longer the comfortable quiet of men who understand each other without words, but something taut and ominous.

“That what this is about? You think you're bad luck?” Gale means it as a joke, the words taste bitter.

Gale is no gambler. But every time he survived when others didn't, it did feel like borrowing against some cosmic debt. Each mission, each brush with death, feels like another payment they'd eventually have to make in full. He has no idea what a gambler's take on all of this would be.

John leans back, his head bumping against the wheel with a thud. There's a scrape on his nose. A raw vulnerability that Gale can't help staring at.

“No,” John says, voice edged with scorn. “It’s that I couldn’t stop—”

Then he stops mid-sentence, leaving Gale suspended over a void of terrible possibilities, each worse than the last. Before Gale can prompt him, John throws his confession like a punch.

“I was looking for you.” 

Thrown, Gale stares at John, trying to process what he's hearing.

“You understand?” John continues. “I was looking for your fort when we were climbing through that flak, Buck. For a moment I was thinking about you, not the mission.” 

Gale doesn’t expect this from John. And the guilt behind it. Because the strange thing is, Gale doesn’t think it would make sense if John wasn’t thinking about him. He doesn’t think he could have made it back if he hadn’t been thinking about John.

“We all get distracted up there,” he tries. “It’s not—” 

“I can't afford to be distracted like that, goddammit.”

John's hand slashes through the air in dismissal. The motion, so unlike his usual languid gestures, shocks Gale into momentary silence. 

Understanding settles into Gale's chest like lead, cold and heavy.

“You think someone has to be responsible for the casualties and you’ve appointed yourself? That it?” Gale asks. “You think you control who lives and dies up there?”

“Hell no,” John says flatly. “But I control where my focus goes. And I'm not risking anyone because I can't keep my head straight.”

Gale nods. “That anyone include you?”

John's jaw works as if chewing over the question. 

“If one of us has to go down first,” he says finally, “it sure oughta be me.”

“John,” Gale says his name like a warning. John carries on, not taking the cue.

“If you get shot down, I won’t be able to do this. Any of this.”

It costs something to watch John's faith fracture. The brazen confidence Gale has always relied on crumbles before his eyes.

“That’s nonsense.” he says, and means it. “I have better faith in you than that.”

John’s response is a laugh followed by a grunt, as if Gale is the one being impossible.

“Don’t you see it? It wouldn’t make any difference. I can’t—I won’t be the reason you don't make it home,” John says. He is looking directly at Gale now, eyes fever-bright. “To Marge.”

Gale wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. At John pushing him toward a future he's already decided to let go of. But John’s eyes are shadowed, the lines around his mouth deeper. He looks older, worn down by something heavier than fatigue. 

“This ain’t ‘bout her,” Gale says.

John laughs genuinely this time, as if what Gale says was a self-effacing joke. “Christ, Buck,” he says. “Someone's got to think clearly around here.”

Anger washes over Gale before he decides whether he should be angry, frustration building at each wave as John shows no intention of elaborating.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

For a moment, John just looks at him. When he speaks, his voice is softer, resigned.

“I think you know, Gale.”

There's something in his voice that Gale is too provoked to parse. An offer, or a plea. Gale's chest tightens, his breaths coming labored, his pulse pounding in his ears. All he can think of is the questions of when and how. He can't even articulate his questions, his thoughts racing through fear, longing, and want. John probably labeled all of these things long ago, then salvoed them like they are dangerous weights, or simply settled facts. And now he's making decisions for both of them based on what he thinks he knows about Gale, without bothering to shed some light on any of it. 

The condescension, the protection, whatever it is, is humiliating enough that Gale wants to hit him. But John is looking at him as if he can't imagine any other outcome, as if it has to be Gale who walks away from them.

His fist loosens before he fully clenches it, his anger melting into emptiness. He stares at John, refusing to let go when John turns away. 

“You don't get to make that call,” Gale says. “Not for me.”

He stands, his joints protesting the abrupt movement after sitting in the cold. He heads back to the cots, wondering what John would have said if, instead of Curt, he was the one who went down swinging. 

John doesn't call him back. Doesn't follow.

 

 

 

Gale has expected sleep will not come to him easily. What he doesn't expect is the dream that follows it—years before the war, a scorching day after thunderstorms broke the day's fever with decisive violence, leaving the air clean and calm. 

It was the first time he’d been to the swimming hole where other boys around his age from school used to gather. Eleven or twelve years old, skinny as a rail, he’d been pedaling his bicycle for a mile to get there. When he arrived, the others were already laughing and shoving as they stripped down to their trunks. He only got rid of his shoes and socks, content just watching them from the edge of the water. 

Then there was Tommy, standing apart from the rowdier boys. He and Gale weren’t really acquaintances; Gale just knew him well enough to know the acknowledgement was mutual, because Tommy called out, breaking Gale's trance.

“You just gonna stand there all day?”  

He dove underwater, disappearing for long seconds before surfacing directly in front of where Gale stood. He shook the water away, looking up at Gale.

“Water's not gonna bite you,” he said with a half-smile.

Gale couldn't help but notice how Tommy had changed that summer. His shoulders had broadened, his neck thickened, skin bronzed from farm work. With everyone distracted by their games, Gale let his gaze linger.

“Not being afraid, ain’t ya?” Tommy asked.

“No,” Gale said. When Tommy reached out to drag his ankle into the water, he had let him. 

The following Sunday, his father had been more silent than usual during the drive home from church. Gale remembers the stale quiet in the car, his father's knuckles sharp on the steering wheel.

Even if Gale had learned the way to decipher the silence from his father, he didn’t see it coming when his father finally spoke.

“Saw you at the pond yesterday,” his father said.

Gale put his hands neatly in his lap before he did something stupid like biting his nails. “Yessir.”

“The Millers boy and his friends were roughhousing. Swimming.” A pause. "You were just watching."

Gale said nothing. He was. Just watching. And soaking his feet in the water. It was colder than he thought in the heavy summer mist, but Tommy’s grip on his ankle had remained warm.

“Real men participate, Gale. They don't sit on the sidelines staring.” His father cut himself off, jaw clenched. “Don't give folks more reason to talk.”

Gale nodded mutely.

“Your mother was soft with you,” he said, his hands flexing against the worn leather. “And it's my job now, to make sure you grow up right. You understand?”

“I understand.”

They'd never spoken of it again. His father was the kind of man that’s never fond of words but takes his job seriously, only it had amazed Gale that there were things other than gambling and drinking that his father was willing to treat as his personal tasks.

Gale had imagined what he would say if he’d gotten a closer look at what Gale had been participating in at the pond. At the time Gale didn’t know the answer, just like he didn’t know why they had still gone to church after his mother died. He could always spot truly religious men from those who merely performed the rituals. He knew his father didn’t believe in god more than he did. 

 

 

 

When Gale wakes up thirsty, sand has gotten into everything. His uniform collar, his boots, his palm lines, the creases of his eyelids. The cotton feeling in his body that seems to absorb any moisture isn't enough to dull his thoughts this time. 

John’s nowhere to be seen, which isn’t a surprise anymore, only the urge to locate him still pulls the strings in Gale’s spine like a muscle memory. 

He wanders around aimlessly, the ground beneath his boots is warm, already radiating the day's accumulated heat. There are men lying in sporadic spots, free of shirts, trying to catch some rays before the sun gets too high over their heads. 

Gale puts a toothpick in his mouth and keeps going, until Benny calls out as he passes by.

“Going somewhere, Major?” 

“Not really,” Gale answers. “Might as well have a look at the breakfast today.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t bother,” Benny says, returning to his letter without interest. It’s Brady who catches his attention before he leaves and says, “Bucky is with the mechanics in the tent.”

“Yeah,” Gale acknowledges vaguely, continuing across the airfield, his sheepskin tucked under his arm, feeling oddly like he's walking into battle without a weapon.

His feet bring him to the tents, close enough to see where Bucky’s situated. John wears only a singlet and shorts, his sunglasses hung low on his neckline, marking the vertex of the parabola formed by the cord against his chest. His red fez is tucked into his shorts pocket, his hands planted on his hips. 

He looks calm. Put-together. He wasn’t down in the lowest of the three squadrons.

The local troop mechanic next to him is a new face to Gale, around Lemmons’s age, probably younger. They stand beside each other with an unfathomable closeness. Amid the rhythmic clanking of tools against metal, the boy says something into John’s ear; in return, he gives him an encouraging slap on the back.

Gale stands there until John notices him and gives him a questioning look. A hot feeling of displacement propels Gale away from the tents. He walks off in time so John sure sees him leaving.

He needs space, air, something to occupy his restless energy. His gaze falls on a group of shirtless men lounging in the sun, and an idea forms. He settles on a relatively flat stretch about fifty yards from the tents. A few boys already lying there salute him. 

“Major Cleven here has decided to join us,” someone announces, noticing Gale's arrival.

“Thought I'd catch some sun with ya boys,” Gale says. “Might be our last chance before heading back to English weather.”

They laugh and curse in agreement. Gale throws his sheepskin onto the ground. The temperature is higher now if you pay attention to its effects. Gale doesn't seem to be able to take in a full breath.

He lifts the hem of his undershirt, a rush of slightly cooler air licking up his skin from where his waistband sits low on his hips. The muscles of his stomach and chest tense up in some instinctive, primal alertness. A sudden, complete awareness of John's potential presence in the vicinity, of him catching sight, sends a current through Gale that has nothing to do with the oppressive heat. 

He pauses, then yanks the clothes high enough to cover his face with it entirely. 

The fabric is dampened by the perspiration in his palm and his own breath, clinging to his features like a moistened mask. He inhales, smells something organic, like blood and fuel and dirt, then drags his shirt off him.

This is deliberate. He knows it, even if he can't name what he's trying to accomplish.

Lying down on the sheepskin only in trousers and boots, arms crossed behind his head, Gale thinks maybe his father did have a point, all those Sunday in church. After all, it has taken being stranded in this god-forsaken desert for Gale to finally face what has been circling inside him all along, like a plane waiting for clearance to land. 

Gale closes his eyes against the sun’s glare and forces his breathing to slow, feigning relaxation while his skin already feels tight and hot despite the short time he'd been exposed. He tries not to think about what it looks like, him putting himself on display like some kind of fucking bait. He feels foolish, vulnerable and bold all at once.

The sun climbs higher, beading his neck with sweat. He tells himself he's not waiting for anything specific, and almost spaces out like this, internally wagering everything. Minutes pass—or maybe it's been longer. Then a shadow falls across his face, pulling him back to the present.

He thinks it was a cloud, but it smells like sweat, hydraulic fluid and gasoline. 

“You're going to burn to a crisp out here, Major.”

John says it casually with an undercurrent Gale can't quite name. He opens his eyes, blinking against the sudden contrast, and squints upward at the silhouette standing beside his feet. The others around him are all gone now.

“Thought I'd get some color,” Gale says, striving for nonchalance despite the dryness in his mouth. 

John doesn't smile. His gaze sweeps briefly over Gale's bare chest and arms before snapping back to his face, expression unreadable. “What are you doin’ here, Buck?”

“I just said.”

“Right,” John says. He shifts his weight, blocking more of the sun from Gale. “Got anything else to tell me?”

Gale chews the toothpick in his mouth. “Depends.”

He raises his chin and knows it’ll bare his throat. John winces, shutting them tight for a second.

“Christ, Buck,” he says, quietly. “What would you have me do?”

Gale hates that John wants him to spell it out for him. Hates that he doesn’t have answers, either, not in a way he could articulate. 

“Be straight with me for once,” he says. “Then we go from there.”

John turns to look out across the airfield. Gale watches his profile and ponders if this was what manhood looked like; not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. The ability to discern what you wanted and still turn away from it for a greater purpose.

“Ask me for something else,” John says, not looking at him. “Anything. Just not this.”

Thing is, Gale can ask for John's life and he'd probably give it to him. It's the easy part of war, the willingness to die, and the acceptance of it. They'd both jumped from burning planes, flown through flak so thick it looked solid, stared down enemy fighters with nothing but determination and luck. Their lives have been reduced to statistics on some colonel's clipboard, and before the twenty-fifth mission, they are going to give up their lives meaninglessly any day now, following orders without question. The math doesn’t seem to add up if they are risking everything in the air but nothing for themselves.

Pulled by a sudden, enormous weariness, Gale sits up, grabbing his sheepskin jacket. 

“Find me when you’ve come to your senses.”

The heat hits him like a slap as he stands and walks away, but it's nothing compared to the burn of frustration coursing through him. Without looking back, he knows John remains motionless, a statue carved from stubborn stone. 

 

 

 

Gale sits by the navigator's desk in his fort, trying to write.

The lined paper stares back at him, blank and accusing, borrowed from Doug because it never occurred to him to bring any when they set out. He chews on the end of his pencil, his thoughts jumbling together like debris in a slipstream, impossible to grasp and pin down with words. The flame in his lantern dances with occasional gusts of wind, throwing restless shadows across the cramped space. 

In the quiet of the night, sounds from unknown desert creatures seem nearer. It feels like anyone trying to reach him would get lost in the vastness out there. But the light filtering through the bullet holes proves bright enough for someone who knows where to look.

Gale hears someone hoist himself up into the belly. The familiar rhythm of boots against metal, the subtle shifts in weight as a body navigates the narrow cabin. Even before he appears, Gale knows it's John. He's spent enough time with him to recognize his mere presence, like identifying a specific engine among the squadron's identical bombers by its particular hum.

“You still up?” John's voice comes from behind him.

“Yeah.” Gale doesn't elaborate. He keeps staring at the paper, pencil balanced between his fingers.

John moves further into the space, but stays a respectful distance away. Gale can feel his occupancy like a change in air pressure. He settles against the opposite wall, pulling out his cigarettes, then changes his mind about it.

“Anything to write home about?” he asks, gesturing toward the desk with his pack of cigarettes.

Gale considers lying but can’t see the point. “Sort of.” Gale turns to face him, the words stick for a moment before he adds, “to Marge, actually.”

John's expression shifts, so subtle that anyone else might have missed it. 

“Right,” he says. Then, “how's that going?”

“Not well.” Gale drops the pencil onto the desk. “Turns out it's hard to say what needs saying.”

John runs his thumb along the edge of his cigarette pack, then puts it back in his pocket.

“Well,” John says. “Some things are better left alone, Buck.”

His matter-of-fact voice makes Gale want to bite back, to crack that infuriating calm and see what's real underneath.

“Been meaning to tell you,” Gale says, “I was trying to write to Marge to break things off.” 

John stares at him, then understanding dawns slowly on his features. He pushes himself away from the wall. 

“For Christ's sake, Gale.” He says, exasperated, “don't make decisions in the middle of all this.”

“When, then?” The question bursts out of Gale with more force than he intended. “After? If there is an after?”

“They're sending us back to England. Transport's coming tomorrow morning.”

Gale lets out a short, humorless laugh. “You think it’s the magic moment when everything gets easier?”

“You don’t understand what's at stake,” John says.

But Gale knows exactly what's at stake. Every time they go up, he knows it. Every time they come back with fewer men than they left with, he knows it. It lives in his bones now, in his sleep, in the way his hands sometimes shake when he's alone.

He also knows that the dark, gnawing want has crawled out of whatever corner he'd shoved it into, and there's no putting it back. 

Gale stands, the cabin suddenly feeling too small. He takes a few restless steps, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“Seems like you've got it all figured out.” Gale hears the snark in his own voice and doesn’t bother modulating.

“We have to get through it,” John states, “that’s the only point right now.”

“No,” Gale grits out. “The point is remembering why it matters.”

John turns away slightly, as if Gale's words have hit him like a physical blow. He rubs his nose with the back of his hand.

“Oh, you’ll remember why it matters after you go home and pick up where you left off. After you’ve got a nice house and put a couple of babies in Marge.”

“Bucky,” Gale says, the warning pale and futile.

“What do you want with me, Gale?” John asks. He is being provocative on purpose, pushing at Gale's boundaries like he's testing how far he dares go. “Something you can’t do to Marge? Something she can’t do you? That it?”

“Fuck you,” Gale snaps, raw and immediate.

John bobs his head, his laugh unkind, belligerence in his eyes. “Yeah? Is that what you want?”

Gale doesn't answer. The confined space feels airless, with all the tension that's been building for days crystallizing into this moment, pressing in on them. 

He can't trust himself to speak. He shoves John hard in the chest, needing some physical outlet for the storm inside him.

John staggers back a step but doesn't retaliate, just straightens and meets Gale's glare. 

“Come on, then,” he says, a challenge in his voice. “Let it all out.”

Gale moves without thinking. He pushes John in the chest again, then goes for his jaw. John tries to catch his wrist, hesitates, like he's remembering his self-imposed rule about not touching, and the pause costs him. Gale's knuckles connect, not as hard as he'd intended but enough to send them both off balance.

They crash against the curved wall of the fuselage, John's shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Gale follows him down, his hands fisting in John's collar, but John tries to kick out to gain leverage, and the awkward movement causes them both tumbling until they're on the narrow floor with Gale straddling John's hips.

They freeze there, breathing hard, the fight draining out of them as quickly as it had flared. For a long moment, neither moves. Gale can feel the rise and fall of John's chest beneath him, can see the pulse jumping at the base of his throat. 

John’s gaze drops to Gale’s mouth, then snaps back up, catching Gale’s. Gale sees not just the residue of anger, but a profound, aching desperation that mirrors his own. Inches apart, he can make out the faint scar near John's left temple, the one he got in training that he never talks about. There’re so many details on his face, on his body, Gale has memorized without noticing, creating a nuanced map he uses for navigation when he's lost after every landing.

He wants to touch. Wants John to stop holding back.

“I think about you,” Gale says, the confession wrenched deep from his chest. “When we were up there, when everything went to hell—I thought about getting us both back down safe.”

John goes very still. His lips part slightly, but no word comes out. He looks like he's fighting some internal war. 

“You can—” Gale starts, then stops, the words catching. He doesn't know how to ask for what he wants, has never known. He's never been good with words, has always relied on action instead. But now the words matter, and he can't find the right ones. 

John's eyes search his face.

Driven by the pressure building inside him, Gale tries again. “If you wanted to, you could—”

He doesn't finish the sentence. Doesn't need to.

John moves. His hands come up to grip Gale's shoulders, unsure. Then his gaze roams across Gale's face one last time, as if looking for any sign of doubt. 

Finding none, John surges upward and kisses him.

The kiss isn’t gentle or chaste. It feels like a culmination of everything they've been circling around for days—perhaps since they first met—and it comes cascading down on him like an avalanche. John's hands slide to cup Gale's jaw as he licks into his mouth, holding him there as if he might try to escape, but everything in Gale has been aching to pull him closer.

When they break apart, gasping for air, John pulls Gale down until they're pressed together, foreheads touching. His breathing is unsteady, his eyes squeezed shut as if it can delay what comes next.

“This can’t be real,” John mutters.

“Feels pretty damn real to me,” Gale says. John’s quiet chuckle brushes over his cheek.

“This only makes it harder and you know that, right?” John whispers, but his hands still grip Gale's shoulders like he might drift away if he lets go.

“I know,” Gale says. “I don't care.”

So John kisses him more. It does feel real. And right. The bristle and scratch of John's mustache against his lips, the calloused fingers tracing the shell of his ear—all of it fitting together like gears finally meshing correctly. The perfection of it almost terrifies Gale, making him freeze in the middle of kissing back.

Reading his hesitation, John pushes up on his elbows, then shifts their positions until Gale is settled in his lap, rearranged easily as if he weighs nothing.

“Hey, look at me,” John says, cupping Gale's chin when he tries to duck his head, overwhelmed by too many sensations all at once.

“What do you want with me, Gale?” John asks, his voice completely transformed from his earlier snark, now soothing and attentive, like he's gentling a spooked animal. It shouldn’t remind Gale of his father in his better days, the rare moments when he'd use that same careful tone to calm their horses, and the kind of focused attention that Gale had only ever earned a fraction in his entire life.

“Gale?”

There’s an imperceptible quiver in the way he says his name, like he starts to doubt that Gale has regretted this.

Gale blinks against the sting building behind his eyes. When his vision clears, John comes back into focus—patient, waiting. 

It's dangerous to see someone as the summation of everything he's ever wanted. Foolish, even. He can't help it anyway.

“I want you to touch me,” Gale says. 

John's face crumples, contorting with pain. 

“I don’t think I can come back from this, Buck.”

“Then don’t,” Gale says.

John groans in relief and hunger. The next instant John rises up and kisses him, Gale surrenders to it. Only it doesn’t feel like surrendering at all. John finds his hips and pulls him closer, their groins bump together through the fabric, and Gale’s body just knows immediately how to arch into the right angle for more friction. There's no hiding they're both half hard, no pretending this is anything other than what it is.

“Let me see you,” John says against his mouth. “Please, baby.”

He asks so sweetly that Gale finds himself shifting up on his knees to let John work at his trousers with surprisingly steady fingers. John finds his cock easily, starts with a few shallow strokes, then wraps his fist around it properly. Gale has done this to himself plenty of times, knows it's not slick enough to feel pleasure free of pain, but it's still so good—better than anything he'd ever felt. His legs shake with it. He moans until John leans up and swallows every sound he makes.

Then John's rhythm slows, his thumb rubbing gentle circles over the head. Gale makes a confused sound and risks looking down to see a dark spot spreading across John's shirt where he's been leaking.

“You can touch me too, Major.” John says, breathing hard, his laugh shaky with arousal.

Gale swallows hard. His fingers fumble with John's belt, so clumsy that John has to free one hand to help him work it open. The sight of John's cock is both familiar and jarring, thick and hard and flushed dark. The touch should feel the same as his own, soft skin slick with sweat and precome, but when Gale wraps his fingers around it, feeling it pulse and twitch in his hand, his mouth goes dry with want.

“Yeah, like that,” John breathes, then adds when Gale's grip falters, “Thought you liked flying the plane.”

Gale snorts in spite of himself, but he starts stroking with more confidence, his hand finding a rhythm. It’s not like he’s gonna crash it judging by the way John groans against his ear, raw and unrestrained.

“Christ, that’s good. You feel so good, doll,” John babbles, returning the favor with fierce strokes and Gale's vision blurs. John's mouth finds his again, and Gale can taste the lingering bitterness of tobacco on his tongue. John’s hands are big and callused and perfect on Gale’s cock. The air is humid and Gale’s sweating. He’s wet all over now, slick and dripping to his balls.

He is dizzy from all of it. The heat, the friction, the overwhelming closeness. He uses his free hand to grip John's shoulder, trying to anchor himself, trying to get closer. He wants to crawl into John's skin and stay inside, to make this feeling permanent.

But then John is working him faster, harder, crueler, and suddenly it all feels too much.

“John, I’m gonna—”

His orgasm rips through him from somewhere deep inside, and he comes hard, spilling onto John's shirt and hand in hot pulses. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out, his grip on John going slack as aftershocks roll through him.

John sits up and uses the shift in weight to roll Gale onto his back against the narrow floor. He tugs Gale's trousers down to his thighs, then settles on top of him, bracing himself on his forearms.

“This okay?” he asks, voice strained with need. “Buck, baby, please let me just—”

Then he rocks his hips forward, rutting against Gale's spent cock and sensitive groin. Gale can't think past the sensation of John’s weight above him. It feels good, too, being used for John's pleasure like this. When he lifts his hips to meet John's next thrust, John gasps sharply.

“Fuck,” he says, “oh god, I’m—”

He grinds desperately against Gale, cursing under his breath, his rhythm breaking apart, and comes with a strangled moan, spilling hot between their bodies.

John's arms shake as he holds himself up, his forehead dropping to rest against Gale's neck while he catches his breath. After a moment, he shifts lower and licks at the mess he's made on Gale's pubic zone with slow, deliberate strokes of his tongue.

“Jesus Christ,” Gale says. John laughs softly, his breath ticklish on Gale’s skin. Gale scoots him up and kisses him, like it’s something he doesn't have to think. His own taste mingles back over his tongue, musky and a bit salty. He smiles and deepens the kiss, warm and content. John wraps his arms around him, their legs tangling together. It’s like they don’t have to let go of each other, not ever.

 

Gale must have dozed off, because he wakes to John's weight settled half across him, their sweat long since cooled.

The lantern has burned out, dawn light slanting through the bullet holes in pale strips, each beam thick with floating dust motes. The plane smells mostly of metal and hydraulic fuel now, cold and inorganic, with only the faintest trace of sex lingering in the air. 

There are clicks and chirps filtered in through the occasional winds, from somewhere Gale can’t really locate, and for a while, they remain the only reminders that other lives exist in this wasteland. John breaths warmly near Gale’s face, his thumb tracing patterns on Gale's hip lightly. When he speaks, his voice is distant.

“You know, Curt was sweet on this girl,” John says quietly. “They met at the O Club. Think it was his first pass after Ireland.”

Gale has never heard this story. It wasn't the kind of talk Curt would bring to him very often, perhaps because he has—had—Marge. The thought of her settles on him with dull weight.

“He had this whole plan for winning her heart, flowers and drinks and all that. But this girl, Cara, half Irish, thought Curt was making fun of her accent when he tried charming her.”

“I'm guessing that wasn't enough to put him off,” Gale says.

“Nah, Curt ain't no quitter. He put Cara on the phone with his granny so she could confirm the family's got Irish blood.”

They laugh together, the sound rumbling between their pressed bodies. Then the laughter fades, and John's voice turns quiet again.

“I thought I wouldn't feel anything when he went down,” John says.

But Gale knows better. John has always been like this. Kind, honest, loyal to a fault, with a heart too big to keep him safe from everything he feels.

Gale tightens his arms around him. John clings back as hard, like he's drowning.

“I still don't know what I'd do if you went down,” he says, muffled against Gale's neck. “Hell, what I'd even be. And it's not like I can figure out how not to lose you either way.”

Gale doesn't know what promises he can make. What words could possibly be enough. None, maybe. 

They stay in the same position until there are voices outside, the indistinct murmurs gradually resolving into familiar cadences, and they know soon it’s time for roll call.

John sniffs, then carefully untangles himself and stands, reaching down to offer Gale his hand. In the growing light, he's beautiful in a way that Gale can't quite understand, yet every line of him is achingly breathtaking. As Gale takes it and lets himself be pulled to his feet, clarity clicks into place. 

Before all the training and preparation for every possible way to fall, John had been the first thing he'd ever fallen for.

Standing beside the hatch now, with reality waiting just below them, Gale makes a decision. It won't be about flying gracefully or maintaining his pride up there. He'll use every skill he possesses, fight tooth and nail if he has to, just to get his job done and land safely on the ground.

“You'll fight until we see each other again,” Gale says, stepping closer. “And then we'll figure the rest out.”

John looks like he wants to believe him but can't quite manage it. He studies Gale’s countenance for a long moment, then something in his expression gives way.

“Yeah, Buck,” he says. “We will.”

He slides his hand to the back of Gale's neck and draws him close, rubbing their noses together before pressing their foreheads to touch. His breathing is unsteady, his cheeks damp. Gale shuts his eyes, knowing this moment will be etched in his heart until his dying day.

When John pulls back slightly, he doesn't meet Gale's gaze. Gale can't help but smile. “Never known you to be shy.”

John huffs out a wet laugh, his eyes crinkling into sweet crescents. When he kisses Gale again, it's soft against each shuttered eyelid, and it feels almost like rain.

 

 

Notes:

Title from Birdy's song of the same name.

Thank you for reading! I'd be delighted to know your thoughts if you enjoyed it :)
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6/4 Update: I posted this on my one-year MotA anniversary, and it feels like the perfect moment to gift it to stereobone. They're the very reason I discovered MotA, and their fanfics have inspired my writing immensely.