Chapter Text
Gale is halfway through taking the laundry down from the clothesline when he hears John's truck engine rumbling down their gravel driveway. There’s that particular weight to the air that comes before rain, thick and humid. He realizes he'd completely lost track of time, getting absorbed in the paperback novel he'd been reading between loads, and the afternoon had slipped away.
A gust of wind catches the white sheet he's just unpinned, sending it billowing out like a sail. Through the flutter of fabric he catches sight of John, the weight of a long day carried on his shoulders.
“How’s work?” Gale asks as John draws close enough for conversation.
“Ah, the usual,” John says, leaning in to press a brief, warm kiss to Gale's cheek. With his lunch pail in one hand, he settles the other on Gale's waist. Gale holds his breath for a second before remembering there’s no one around to see them. Their nearest neighbor is more than a mile away through the trees, and the road that passes their house sees maybe three cars on a busy day.
“The kid I told you about, Philip? Failed the speed test again.”
John had gotten the job as a flight instructor a while ago, working for the biggest agriculture aviation company in the region. The business is booming, and there's more work than qualified pilots to handle it. The pay is decent enough for a job that doesn't present many real challenges, though Gale knows John sometimes chafes at the routine nature of it all.
Gale has a hard time picturing him in one of those small, docile planes they use for crop dusting. But he supposes the work has its moments of excitement. Flying at extremely low altitudes. Making sharp turns around power lines and grain silos. Threading over golden wheat fields that stretch to the horizon.
“Didn’t you say he is one of the new trainees?” Gale asks.
John makes a dismissive sound, a blend of a tsk and a sigh. “Not that new anymore. Hell, we mastered the same kind of test on our second attempt. Third at most.”
He shifts closer until he's practically draped over Gale's back, arms wrapped loosely around his waist, hands folded over his lower abdomen. When he talks, Gale can feel the low rumble of his voice vibrate through his spine. It's slowing him down with the chores, but Gale has no intention of complaining about the distraction.
“Well,” he says, releasing another undershirt from the clothespins, “we were not training for crop dusting.”
John falls silent behind him, getting lost in his own thoughts. It's the gentle kind of quiet—Gale can tell from the way John's breathing stays even and calm, stirring the hair at his temple. Sometimes John comes home carrying tensions, wound up by incidents at work that shouldn't be able to affect him as much as they do. On those days, his silences have sharp edges, and Gale has learned not to push.
“I did get to fly a Bobcat today, though,” John says at length. “Single-seat fighter trainer. Now that's what we're talking about, Buck. Felt like the good old days for about twenty minutes there.”
Something wistful in John's voice makes him sound distant, far away from the ground where the grass has carried that sharp, earthy smell of autumn sun all week, leaving Gale drowsy.
“I should take you up sometime when the weather's nice.”
John keeps saying things like that on days when nostalgia has gotten the better of him. Gale has never held him to the promise.
“Don’t count on it,” Gale hears himself say, and there’s no bite to it, just like the good old days.
Gale should have checked their refrigerator before John left for work this morning. They're running low on basics—eggs, milk, probably half a dozen other things. His options for dinner are severely limited now, and there isn’t much time left for making them, anyway.
He tried, but the hamburger he'd managed to cobble together could only be judged as subpar at best. The edges of the meat are crispy in all the wrong ways, and he'd been heavy-handed with the salt. John doesn't seem to mind any of it, finishing every bite without complaint.
“Was gonna make a roast,” Gale says. “Forgot we don’t have carrots left.”
“Don’t sweat it. Never cared for carrots,” John says, and Gale smiles at his plate. John is watching him when he raises his head, thoughtful.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nah, just looking at you. Making a square meal for the two of us,” he says. “Keeping the house clean, too. Taking care of everything.”
“It’s nothing,” Gale says.
“You know it’s never nothing, doll,” John says, setting down his fork. “Been running yourself ragged all day, bet you could use some rest.”
The shift in John's tone is sudden, perceptible. Makes Gale's pulse quicken. He doesn’t say anything, just shovels one last bite into his mouth.
“Why don’t you let me take care of you now, huh?”
He knows what John’s suggesting before John stands up, unhurried, walks around the table and stops beside Gale’s chair. Gale pushes his dish a bit further away from the edge of the table. He learned that lesson the hard way once before.
John's hands find the back of Gale's chair. He drags it, rotating it with Gale still sitting in it, the legs scraping against the linoleum. When Gale is facing him, John kneels in front of him, dropping down onto the kitchen tiles with a solid thud. It’s too quiet to not capture all the details with Gale’s ears. The shirt being tugged free from his waistband. The zipper being undone. John taps his thighs and Gale lifts his hips, allowing John to hook his thumbs into both his trousers and briefs and push them down. The fabric pools around his ankles, and Gale steps one foot free.
“That’s it,” John murmurs, his voice gone low and rough. “Aren’t you my good, bright girl?”
Gale can control his breathing, but he can't do anything about the flush he knows must be painting his cheeks red. It spreads down his throat, making it hard for him to swallow his spit. John's hands guide him forward until he's perched on the edge of the chair, his weight balanced precariously. Then John's pressing him back, legs spread wide, completely exposed in the bare kitchen chair.
For a long moment, John just watches him. Even with his eyes closed, Gale can feel the weight of that stare as it travels over his body. He's long past the point of feeling true humiliation about this, but his legs still tremble slightly with the strain of holding the pose. John lifts one of Gale's legs, guiding it up so that his foot rests flat against the solid muscle of John's thigh. Gale's toes curl instinctively, finding purchase on the firm surface. The new angle opens him even further, and he has to bite back a soft sound at the sensation of cool air against slick skin.
John cups him, fingers sure as they lift Gale’s cock and balls together in one warm palm. Gale knows it’s to gain better access, but John’s touch is tender, almost careful. It's something that still surprises Gale sometimes, how John approaches every part of his body with the same focused attention and obvious desire. But Gale doesn’t sit well in that kind of attention, getting all skittish when John tells him his peach fuzz balls are soft as kittens or some other ridiculous thing that shouldn't be endearing and yet somehow is. He knows it’s because John says them with that particular fondness, and it reminds Gale of a time that’s too far away, before their planes crashed.
The first touch of John's tongue against his most sensitive flesh makes Gale's thoughts scatter. Part of his mind flashes to the sauce he'd overcooked earlier and wonders if the burnt flavor will mix with his own taste in John’s mouth. But John has never been one to care about such things. He's gone down on Gale after long days of housework when Gale felt grimy and needed a shower first. John doesn’t care if he’s presentable. He likes that Gale makes himself ready and willing. For him.
John’s tongue traces a path and presses in, and Gale stops thinking about anything else.
/
The house Gale finds at John’s address is a modest one-story structure that sits like a lone tooth in a boundless expanse of yellowed grass. Once painted milky white, it’s weathered to the color of old bones under the relentless prairie sun. On the outskirts of the property, the remnants of a fence lean at different angles, surrender to time and neglect along with rotted posts and sagging wire.
The tin roof gleams white in the afternoon heat, which makes the house appear almost charming from a distance, like something from a postcard. If John hadn't mentioned buying this place in that only letter he’s sent in, Gale would never have believed it was something John Egan would purchase.
There's a black pickup parked outside, its paint job faded and patchy. Gale parks his rental beside it, the dust from his tires settling slowly in the still air. Up close, he wonders if John has sold this place, the rust blooming like disease across the wheel wells and door panels. It's hard to imagine John letting his property fall into such disrepair. Maybe Gale's driven sixteen hours into the middle of nowhere only for nothing.
It’s 3 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, he figures it’s not too rude for an uninvited old friend to show up unannounced, given that courtesy stopped mattering between them a long time ago.
He knocks. It takes him a moment to process the scent, but he smells John even before the door opens.
John used to remind him of summer green after rain, deep, warm and endless. There’s no hiding the change now. The forest has gone stagnant; moss and decay creep in at the edges, undercut by something sweet and ripe, like fruit left too long in the sun. A scent of a wound, Gale recognizes. An immediate, undeniable sign from something rotting.
John must have smelled him, too. The man behind the door shows no surprise. Confusion, maybe. Nothing remotely close to excitement.
Gale had expected John’d look different given the shift in his scent, but not this. Not a stranger living in John’s skin.
“Buck Cleven.” The man has one hand gripping the door frame, summoning it back to life—a name Gale hasn’t heard once since their farewell on the air base in Kearney over a year ago. “What brings you out here?”
The decision to leave Wyoming after receiving his bachelor's degree wasn’t a difficult one. The break up with Marge was amicable, more like roommates ending a lease than lovers parting ways. Gale thinks that she’d seen it coming months before Gale did, how he'd acted like a foreigner in his own country, in his own house. She was patient enough to wait until the pieces fell into place for him, though she didn't have many choices in the matter, really. With the war a page turned and new orders taking shape, there are expectations pressing down. You don’t leave your responsibilities behind unless you're ready to abandon things that are guaranteed. They both need time to reflect on the things they were told they should want.
Most of his belongings are kept in his house in Casper, which he promised Marge she could stay in for as long as she needed to figure out her next step. Still, he travels with more than a week's luggage—enough clothes for an extended stay.
John makes no comment on Gale bringing a duffel bag plus a suitcase. In fact, he doesn't ask how long he's planning to stay, or offer a drink or a place to sit. Once they’re inside, his attention seems to belong entirely to the whiskey bottles scattered across the kitchen counter, like gamblers to their chips.
Gale is left standing in the living room, taking inventory of John's life. Besides a sagging couch and a coffee table scarred with ring stains and cigarette burns, there's not much else. The curtains are pulled tight against the afternoon sun, the only light comes from the back door, a harsh rectangle that illuminates dust motes dancing in the stagnant air. There are smells permeating everything—limescale from neglected plumbing, grime that's settled into the walls, something sour and organic that suggests John hasn't been keeping up with basic maintenance.
The house is an ailing thing, something slowly dying from the inside out. If any other observation is worth noting, there seems to be no one but John that lives here.
“What are you doin’ here, Buck?” John asks again.
The mere sight of him is a lot to take in, and not because of the natural build he used to sport. His clothes hang loose on a frame that used to fill out his uniform, his hair longer than regulation and unkempt, his eyes distant with dark circles and puffiness.
None of the reasons that bring Gale down here feel appropriate when John treats him like a door-to-door salesman. Gale fishes out his toothpick box from his pocket. Decides against it.
“You stopped responding to my letters," he says, chewing on the explanation instead. “Or calls. Figured I might as well show up at your doorstep.”
“What can I say, I’m a hard man to find,” John says with the flat humor of someone who hardly finds anything funny. “‘M not dead, though.”
“Why didn’t you write me back?” Gale asks, though he's starting to understand the answer just by looking around this place.
“This really necessary?” John asks instead.
“How’d you mean?”
“Driving for a whole day and showing up here,” John says, “for what, checking on me in person?”
Gale takes a deep breath, lets the smell of the house fill his lungs. A bitter, physical reminder of how much John has let himself go.
“Nothin’s wrong with a man checking on his best friend,” he says.
“We’re not in the stalag anymore, Buck,” John says. “Don’t gotta worry I’d run into the barbed wire.”
“Bucky,” Gale warns him, recognizing the dangerous edge creeping into John's tone.
“You’ve seen me with your own eyes.” John ignores him, weaves his hand in a small gesture that somehow encompasses the decay around them, the ruin he's made of himself. “What’s the plan now?”
“Don’t have a plan,” Gale says. “I need time to figure something out.”
“Well, you better come up with one,” John says, pouring himself another two fingers like the conversation is already over. “With a fallback to boot.”
John drives them twenty minutes down a two-lane highway to a bar because there's nothing edible in John's fridge other than half a carton of eggs and a package of lunch meat that looks like it was produced before they enlisted. The drive passes in uncomfortable silence, the truck's air conditioning broken and windows rolled down, letting in the thick evening heat and the smell of dry grass.
They park at a roadhouse that's seen better decades, its parking lot gravel mixed with cigarette butts and bottle caps. Inside, it's mercifully dim and cooler, half the tables sitting empty even for a Sunday evening, mostly locals nursing beers and listening to a baseball game on the radio mounted behind the bar.
The booth they secure is in the back corner, red vinyl seats cracked and patched with duct tape. Gale orders a tuna sandwich and a Coke, John just asks for a basket of chips and whatever beer they have on tap.
The service is efficient, if nothing else. Gale holds the curved bottle of his Coke, finding it easier to talk that way. He tells John about college and how fitting back into it feels like forcing mismatched puzzle pieces together. About the ridgeline on his drive to and from school, and how he would never realize, during all those years of dreaming about escape, how much he'd miss it one day. John lights a cigarette, barely nodding along. When the conversation dries out, withering in the smoky air between them, John doesn't make the slightest effort to pretend he wants to share anything about his own life. The life that's been carrying on without Gale.
“Ah, the usual,” John only gives a non-answer. “Nothing’s new.”
“Heard that you decided to retire, is all,” Gale says.
“Well,” John says after a pause long enough to take another drag, ash flicking onto the scarred table. “Seems that way.”
Gone is the man who used to talk Gale's ear off about everything and nothing. It’s never been like this—literally pulling teeth to get even the most basic information. Gale inhales, tries again, aiming for the kind of easy ribbing that once was their bread and butter. “Thought you were going to outrank me.”
“Thought I was going to make it to the majors, too,” John shoots back.
A burst of cheering erupts from the radio, some baseball play that sends the handful of regulars into momentary celebration.
“You can still play baseball, though,” Gale says conversationally. “Bet you could find some Yankees fans around here if you looked.”
“There’s nothing to find here, Buck, in case you haven’t noticed,” John says, like he’s tired of the day already. “Don’t know why you bother. If I were you? I’d head back to Casper first thing in the morning. Yeah, that’s what I’d do.”
“‘M not in a hurry, John,” Gale says, biting into the cold bread. The filling is tasteless.
“Why, you got into a fight with the missus? That what this is about?” John asks, working through the chips like it's a chore.
“We’re not quite there anymore.”
“Yeah?” John says, doesn’t seem to grasp the meaning behind Gale’s word. He takes a long pull from his beer. Lets out a burp. “Thought you'd found yourself another best man by now, never got the invitation.”
Annoyance crawls up Gale's neck. He takes a measured sip of his Coke, the sweet fizz doing nothing to cool his rising temper.
“You’d be updated on all that if you’d bothered to read those damn letters,” he says, unable to keep the edge out of his voice entirely. He'd written four of them after receiving John’s single, last letter in return. He’d updated John about his studies, about Marge, about the mundane details of his civilian life like an idiot.
John watches him through half-lidded eyes, beer foam still patchy on his mustache.
“Did it even occur to you that maybe I don’t want to know anything about all that?”
Gale would've taken it personally if John wasn't so thoroughly aloof about everything. Do you blame me for leaving? Gale would’ve asked. But it seems John simply stopped caring about anything. The food growing cold on his plate, the baseball game playing overhead. It takes Gale a moment to pinpoint what seems so wrong about seeing John in this place. John doesn't acknowledge the bartender beyond grunting his order. Doesn't nod at the patrons who glance his way with vague recognition. John, who used to walk into any room and command it without trying, now sits hunched in a corner booth like he's glued to the cracked vinyl.
“Have you been in touch with the boys?” Gale asks, though he already suspects the answer.
“Have you been seeing anyone, have you been working, have you been drinking,” John mimics in a sing-song voice that doesn't quite hide the venom. “Even my ma doesn’t ask me those questions anymore, Buck.”
“You been ignoring her calls just like mine?”
“No need,” John says with a snort. “I guess all she needs is a son that's still breathing, doesn't matter if he's not really around.”
“You know it’s not true."
“Well, I don’t,” John says. “And neither do you.”
A crooked smile appears on his face—a sliver of the man Gale spent one and a half years with in a Krauts prison. This is the John who was so used to taking pain and misery that he almost looked forward to them because it was the only thing he could count on. Gale sees that all the time and distance have done little to free John from his past. He is still there, still waiting for the next blow, as if it's all he has left.
“You trying to cut ties with everyone in your life?” Gale asks quietly.
“Thing is,” John amends, “I’m not even trying, Buck.”
The room John shows Gale after they've returned from the bar obviously doubles as a storage room, cardboard boxes stacked from floor to ceiling, each one labeled in faded handwritings. A small bulb hangs from the ceiling, casting distorted shadows that make the cramped space feel even smaller.
“It’s not much,” John notes. “But there’s a clean sheet for the night.”
The single bed pushed against the far wall is stripped down to a mattress with stains that could be coffee or something worse. At least John has cleared whatever mess was on the bed, the hasty pile of clothes and empty bottles shoved into the corner.
“Fine for me,” Gale says, taking the sheet from John’s hand, the fabric thin and worn soft, oddly clean with a faint scent of detergent.
John’s lips are drawn tight at that. “Yeah,” he says, “Guess we’ve both seen worse accommodations.”
Gale waits until John's footsteps fade down the hallway before he starts getting changed. He shrugs off his shirt and pants, the cloth sticking to his skin from the day's humidity. He can't bring himself to bother digging pajamas out of his duffel bag, tired to the bone after hours of driving, after tiptoeing around everything they should have said but didn't.
Spreading the sheet over the mattress, tucking the corners with military precision feels automatic after all these years. Gale lies down, wondering when the last time he slept with dust in his hair was. Probably in some bombed-out building in Germany, or in the stalag when the roof leaked and debris fell like snow.
The pillow is flat and lumpy, smells of John just like the ones they shared before. Only back then the scent was accompanied by the furnace heat of John's chest pressed against his back, John's heartbeat thundering against his spine.
It’s too early for a bed too spacious for one person despite being barely wide enough for Gale’s shoulders. He thinks of Marge, to whom he hadn't told he was coming here, but had probably guessed. “It's what you two do,” Marge'd said once with her wistful smile. “Circle back to each other.” Gale thinks of the growing certainty that she'd always known things couldn't work out between them, that Gale could never give her the complete devotion she deserved.
Now that the blueprint of a normal household has crumbled, Gale looks back on things like their last dance before he shipped out, or the letters she sent into the stalag, and figures their relationship had always been more like charity on her part. Gale was the one who needed someone to write home to. He was the one who clutched the engagement like a lifeline, a thin string to tether himself to a solid ground when he’d been gliding in the openness of John’s instinctual wanting sometimes he felt he was never going to land.
He thinks of what he would’ve done if he knew that ending up in John's orbit again would feel like falling through the endless sky with no parachute, no ground in sight. He can’t imagine much would have changed.
Gale sleeps in. He wakes up disoriented at almost nine, pulled by harsh sunshine slanting in through the small window near the ceiling. His body aches from the narrow mattress, and he almost forgets where he is, before reality crashes back into his consciousness with a sneeze from the musty smell in the room.
The house is deep in its slumber, oppressively quiet. Gale pulls on his clothes and pads down the hallway in sock feet, trying not to make the old floorboards creak. He freshens up, finds a dented aluminum percolator and some ground coffee in John's lean kitchen, tucked behind a collection of empty bottles.
Between the two of them, John had been the one who couldn’t stand surviving on whatever passed for caffeine in the stalag, always bartering for something cleaner and stronger. Gale makes do, never having learned the proper way to make decent coffee. The result tastes dense and bitter. Gale sits at the scarred kitchen table, nursing his punishment in a cup.
It's not until past ten that John finally emerges from his room, shuffling down the hallway with pillow creases on his cheek.
“Morning,” he mumbles without meeting Gale's eyes, heading straight for the bathroom. It’s another quarter hour of waiting before John reemerges, marginally more human after splashing cold water on his face and running a wet hand through his hair.
And the first thing John does is reach for the bottles lined up in the cabinet.
“You haven’t been sober since I got here,” Gale says tightly. “Can’t you quit it for one goddamn second?”
“Tall order, major,” John says, proceeding to grab a glass from the sink, examining it briefly for cleanliness before apparently deciding it doesn't matter.
“We need to talk, Bucky.”
“‘M listening.”
“I’ve talked enough,” Gale says. “You tell me what happened.”
The scoff John makes is more like air leaking from a punctured tire. He gestures around the kitchen with his free hand.
“Does it look like anything’s happening here?”
Gale’s patience finally snaps. He decides he’s done with all this.
“Cut the bullshit, John,” he grits out. “You were on active duty. And now you're not. What happened?”
John closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the charade is gone, his expression hardening into something cold and opaque.
“What does it matter to you?”
Gale feels a rage so intense it surprises him—a white-hot fury that makes him want to sweep the bottles off the counter, smash something just to hear it break. But underneath the anger, there's a deeper terror. A fear that John is determined to keep him out of whatever hell he's built for himself. Gale swallows the fury and lets the fear drive his next words, trying to puncture the wall John has put up.
“You really rather I go back to Casper like this?” Gale asks, more urgent. “Leave you alone for good? That what you want?”
John doesn't look at him. He hunches over the kitchen table, the half-empty bottle of whiskey like the only companion he’s ever wanted. He is a skeleton wearing John's skin.
“What does it matter?” he repeats, his voice flat as roadkill. “You didn’t need my permission to leave. You don’t now.”
It feels like a slap in the face. And it would be fair, Gale thinks, if it was a real punch.
He savors the sting left by John’s words and thinks maybe he should. Leave. Walk out from this tomblike place amidst a 95-degree humid summer, step into the blazing afternoon and relive that cold night when he left John behind under the barrel of a gun and fled to the other side of hell. He's done this before. The muscle memory is there, ingrained in his bones: pack light, move fast, don't look back. His mind maps out the route to his truck, calculates the hours to anywhere else, anywhere that doesn't smell like John's defeat.
But his feet stay rooted to the warped floorboards as if they've grown through the wood and into the earth below. He can't move them.
“What if I want it?” Gale hears himself say.
A flicker. A tiny, almost imperceptible spark in the bottomless pit of John's eyes—the first sign of a real response. Incredulous but real.
“What if I stay,” Gale continues, using his words as an anchor, thrown into the murky depths of John's despair. “Long as you tell me to.”
John is silent. Turns the cap of his whiskey bottle upside down, then back up, fingers nimble despite the alcohol running in his veins. The repetitive motion is almost meditative, the cap clicking against the wooden table with each turn. Gale counts the clicks because it's easier than watching the corners of John's eyes twitch. Sixteen times before John speaks up: “What about Marge?”
“It’s over,” Gale says, quick and sharp like setting a broken nose. “We called it off. The engagement.”
John winces—a reflex response, not from sympathy or regret. Gale has braced himself for a just like I told you, Buck . Or something able to count as enthusiastic, if Gale’s being honest. But John does neither. He leans back in the chair with both hands crossed in front of his chest.
“Right, things didn’t work out with her, so you click your heels together three times and now you’re here,” John says, his voice dripping with cynicism. “That’s one hell of a long way, Buck.”
This bitter edge is nothing new, but the sarcasm sits all wrong on his features, making his face almost unbearable.
“If you don’t want me here, just say it outright.”
John laughs to himself, an unkind laugh that smells like whiskey.
“So this is your plan? Moving in with an alpha?” John asks. “What happened to ‘not gonna be someone’s housewife’?”
The words hit their mark with surgical precision. John is doing this on purpose, Gale's pretty sure now. He swallows hard. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Oh yeah?” John nods. Slowly, like he's relishing this exchange. “How’s that?”
Gale knows the two scenarios would be practically the same. He just won’t give John the satisfaction. John snorts at the aversion of Gale’s eyes.
“Don't tell me this is just a replica of the stalag,” he pushes, “that you’re just helping me out.”
There's something resentful in the way he says it. But that’s not how Gale remembers it.
When the German issued suppressants were in shortage and John got anxious and riled up, his alpha instincts going haywire in captivity, Gale had offered to calm him down with his pheromones. It had started with scenting, Gale's neck pressed against John's face while John breathed him in like he was drowning and Gale was air.
But the cramped quarters and constant fear left them raw and desperate, pushing their boundaries beyond what was simple. It wasn’t long before John started asking for more skin contact. First it was John's nose pressed to Gale's wrist, then his forearm, then his chest and lower stomach. John's face was buried against Gale's ribs while other men pretended not to notice, while they all pretended this was just practical, just survival. Eventually, when no one was in the barrack except for the two of them, Gale had opened his legs for John to put his mouth there—not for pleasure, never that, but for the concentrated pheromones settling John's fraying nerves. John had begged, once, to put his finger inside, but that was too much like fucking. Gale had drawn the line there and John had accepted it with something near reverence, satisfied with whatever Gale was willing to give.
“I don’t remember you had problems with that,” Gale says at length.
“I didn’t, did I?” John says.
A pause passes for reflection. For what they’d done. Then John stands up, the chair scraping against the floor with a sound like fingernails on wood. He towers over Gale, looking down with eyes that have gone dark and clear, and reaches out to cup Gale's jaw in his palm.
“If you stay,” John says, almost to himself, “what’d be the difference this time?”
His thumb caresses Gale’s cheek, the callus on it catches on the stubble Gale hasn't bothered to shave in days. Gale keeps his breathing steady, letting his decision solidify inside him.
“What you asked for back then,” Gale says, “I’d give you now.”
John’s nostril flares, and his grip on Gale’s face tightens just enough to make Gale's breath catch.
“You said you don’t plan to bond with anyone,” John says, his voice carrying a note of confusion.
When Gale had first introduced Marge to John, he did tell John that Marge was a beta—safe, uncomplicated, free from the biological imperatives that could trap an omega like him. No risk of an unwanted bond. The social contract would be enough, and the shared life built on choice rather than chemistry was what he’s after for. With good-natured ribbing, John had even joked that it must have helped them to keep chaste before marriage, having no instinctual urge.
Given John’s reputation with omegas on both sides of the Atlantic, Gale isn’t sure if he should feel offended that John jumps to the assumption of bonding as soon as Gale’s offering is on the table.
“I don’t,” Gale says, feeling John's fingers dig slightly into his cheeks. “Not what’s happening here.”
John's eyes search his face, looking for cracks in his resolve, for the lie he's certain must be hiding somewhere.
“Then what is this,” he asks, an almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw. “Charity?”
Gale thinks of John’s crumpled two-dollar bill. John driving him through the tarmac with his arm draped over the seat, so close that Gale could count the freckles on his wrist and distract himself from the mission. John anchoring him by needing him, giving him purpose; his hold so tight Gale could feel their ribs shifting. John pushing him, challenging him, believing in him until Gale jumped over that wall and made his escape.
“You can think what you think,” Gale says, because he can’t begin to explain that if they're talking about charity, there’s no way to say which one of them is the beneficiary.
“Yeah?” John nods. “Thing is, I don’t think you’re capable of giving it to me.”
John tilts his head, a familiar challenge in his eyes. Just like that, they're back in the skies. They’d done this hundreds of times in Randolph, pushing the envelope until they were combat-ready. It’s all about endurance—how many loops, rolls and death-defying spins you could manage before your nerve broke. And Gale had never, not once, been the first to tap out.
“Want some proof?” Gale asks.
John watches him, expressionless until he lets out a crooked, genuine smile.
“Sure,” he says. “Why don’t you go sit on the couch.”
The suggestion seems to ricochet in the small kitchen, an order, a dismissal and a statement. Gale promised a negotiable boundary, and now John is putting him in his place.
Gale stands up without breaking eye contact. Let John see that this’s not some game he can't handle. He walks to the living room with John trailing behind, and hesitates for a moment before choosing the three-seater sofa, sinking down into the unexpectedly soft upholstery. It feels less like furniture and more like a coil-spring trap.
John doesn't sit down beside him. Instead, he pushes the coffee table aside with one fluid motion of his leg, and suddenly the space in front of Gale feels too vast. John positions himself there, close enough that Gale can smell everything on him. Stale liquor and unwashed hair, beneath them still is the familiar alpha scent. Cyprus, leather and sweet smoke.
Not a word exchanged except for their breathing, chasing, surrounding one another. Slowing down. It’s a bombing run, everything goes quiet and focused, the world narrowing to just the mission ahead.
Gale reaches for John’s belt, but John shakes his head. Not like that.
The air grows dense, gel-like. Gale closes his eyes for a second, gathering himself.
“John,” he starts, then stops. Words stick in his throat like cotton. He smells his own nervous sweat mixing with cloudy arousal. He reaches for his own belt, the metal buckle cold against his fingertips. His fly comes next, the sound of the zipper impossibly loud in a house so quiet he can hear the clock ticking and the floor creaking when John shifts his weight.
Gale pauses, fabric bunched in his hands, suddenly aware of the finality in this second.
“C’mon,” John says, his voice softer than it's been all day. “Be nice and take those off for me.”
The words send heat crawling up Gale's spine. He knows what's coming, but the reality still feels surreal. Even in the cramped, desperate privacy of the stalag, he'd kept this much of himself hidden. John had tasted him through fabric, pressed his face against the barrier of cloth.
Gale takes a deep breath, then another. Pushes the fabric down from his waist. His pants and underwear pool around his ankles, and he works his feet free.
John stares at him with undisguised scrutiny, his gaze piercing like a predator. Gale feels stripped. Completely exposed, laid bare. He feels the urge to cover himself, but it wars with a deeper, animalistic hunger stirred by the alpha's desire.
“You're shaking,” John observes.
Gale can feel it between his thighs, the way his body responds to John's attention despite the vulnerability of his position. Or perhaps because of it. With the finest tremor, goosebumps rise along Gale’s thighs. The realization that he's getting wet simply from being watched hits him with embarrassing clarity. His feet remain planted firmly on the floor, thighs spread in what he hopes looks like confidence rather than the defensive posture it feels like. He won't let himself fold inward like some shy girl.
“We can stop,” John says. The offer is tempting, so reassuring that it makes something fierce and stubborn flare in Gale's chest.
“I’m fine.”
His dangling resolve hardens into something unshakeable. John seems to sense the shift in Gale.
“Sure,” he says. “Touch yourself, then.”
Gale bites down hard on his bottom lip. The command settles in his stomach like a stone. His mouth goes dry. His hand moves almost without conscious thought, wrapping around his soft cock. The skin is familiar under his palm, but his fingers feel numb, disconnected from the rest of him. He strokes slowly, mechanically, trying to coax some response from flesh.
“Nuh-uh,” John shakes his head again. Regretful, like he's sorry to have to correct him. “Not there, though.”
Gale's brain stutters to a halt. He stares up at John, who looks back at him with unashamed intent. No wavering in John's expression, no sign that he might back down from what he's just asked.
Gritting his teeth, Gale lets his hand drift lower, experimental.
He’s never really touched himself there save for basic cleaning, never had reason to. His skin burns under John's watchful gaze while his fingers find the entrance. He pushes inside with both his index and middle finger at once, trying to mimic what he thinks John wants to see.
The intrusion is awkward, uncomfortable. He winces as he starts thrusting, the way he supposes it should work.
“Whoa, easy there,” John says, taking half a step back and tilting his head. “What are you doing down there, Buck?”
His voice carries a note of concern mixed with something that might be amusement. Gale’s breath catches, heat flooding his face.
“You said—”
The words die in his throat. He can't finish the sentence. Everything feels muddled in the clueless mortification.
The amusement fades. John bites the inside of his cheek, recalibrating.
“You and Marge,” John starts, then hesitates—something John rarely does. It's like he's trying not to spook Gale. “You two ever—”
He makes a gesture with his forefinger, a vague, wiggling motion that doesn't really symbolize anything specific. But Gale understands perfectly. Heat and defense crawls up his neck in the face of the question.
“Of course we have.”
It earns a lopsided smile from John. “ Of course ,” he echoes with unmistakable sarcasm. Then, matter-of-fact: “Has she ever fucked you?”
The bluntness of it makes Gale recoil, then indignant.
“None of your business,” he retorts. “Do you want me to continue or not?”
But even as he says it, Gale feels himself balanced on the edge of a knife. Part of him wants nothing more than to grab his clothes and bolt from this entire situation. The other part—the part that brought him here in the first place—is terrified that John might call a stop to this whole thing out of disappointment or boredom. That fear weighs heavier, tips the balance. He reaches down again, trying to resume his attempt and hoping it will get them back on track.
“Alright, that’s enough,” John says, cutting through Gale's fumbling clumsiness. “Put your feet on the couch.”
For a second, the words don’t make sense. Don't penetrate the fog in Gale's head.
“You heard me.” John repeats, no impatience in it. “Put your feet on the couch, Buck.”
Gale's ears ring. His vision narrows until all he can see is John's face, serious and expectant. His body responds before his mind can catch up, moving with its own logic. He leans back, hips scooting forward for balance, the fabric rough against his bare skin. His knees bend and lift, feet finding purchase on the sofa cushions, heels angled out to either side at forty-five degrees.
The position makes him feel like he's standing at attention for inspection, every inch of him examined under John's shrewd, unblinking gaze. The vulnerability is overwhelming. Active, deliberate and complete.
“That’s better,” John says, and there's satisfaction in his voice that makes Gale's stomach flutter, eyes stinging.
Despite everything, Gale is hard, his cock resting against his stomach, betraying his body's response to this humiliation. He knows his cunt is on full display, knows John can see everything; Gale, a prey caught in a trap of his own making.
There shouldn’t be much difference in anatomy between Gale and the countless omegas John has undoubtedly seen. But the voice in Gale’s head whispers that maybe he's abnormal somehow. Born wrong. He wouldn’t know.
He feels sick in the spiral of self-doubt. Flinches back when John reaches for his right hand, fingers wrapping around Gale's wrist. John guides his hand downward, like he’s controlling a marionette, and suddenly it's Gale's own fingers touching himself, but it feels like John's touch by proxy.
John makes Gale stop at a particular spot, applies just the right amount of pressure. Gale's legs twitch involuntarily and he sucks in a sharp breath.
“You feel that? It's like a little button,” John says, using Gale's fingertip to trace slow circles over the sensitive place. “Just hidden away in your sweet pussy.”
“Jesus, John,” Gale breathes, the words coming out strangled.
“You can rub it. Brush it,” John continues, attentive. “Pinch it a little if you want.”
He demonstrates with patience. Tingly sensations crash over Gale in waves that leave his mind utterly blank. No coherent thoughts form as John releases his wrist, leaving him on his own. Gale rubs it, and then harder, squeezes it with his pointer and middle finger and hears himself choke on his breath.
“That’s it. You’re learning fast.” John says. It should’ve been pathetic how much he still craves that validation, how John's praise can undo him even now. It should have.
“Now put your fingers back inside, but take it slow this time.”
Gale follows the instruction like an earnest cadet, his mouth falling open as his eyes flutter shut. Wet, obscene sounds are squelched from between his legs as he fucks himself, but he finds he doesn't care.
“Hook your fingers and make it good for yourself,” John guides him, step by step like he's walking Gale through a complex flight manual. “Yeah. Use your wrist, not just your fingers.”
Gale can feel his cunt pulsing and clenching around his fingers like there's something alive inside his body, throbbing with its own need. He’s never had sex quite like this. Not by himself, not with anyone. He’s not even sure he can call this sex. It’s like flying without a mission, guided only by instinct toward a destination. The surrender itself almost makes his head spin.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” John's voice seems to come from everywhere at once. “Bet you feel really good right now.”
Gale does. More than. He rolls his hips down, enjoys the slight ache in his swollen cunt, the faintest trace of pain threading through the pleasure. Thinks he couldn't stop now if he wanted to.
“You wanna feel even better?” John asks.
Gale looks up, or perhaps he just rolls his eyes back a bit. His vision is hazy, everything soft around the edges. Everything feels overwhelming. He couldn’t stop.
“Answer me, Buck.”
“Yes,” Gale gasps, Then, “please.”
The desperation in his own voice shocks him. John's expression shifts into something unreadable.
“C’mere, doll,” he says, guiding Gale’s head toward his crotch, where the fabric is thick with his scent, a deliciously ripe mixture of days-old sweat, musk and his alpha pheromones. It's like a punch to Gale's gut, making him feral. Desperate. Out of his mind as he works his hand faster, movements frantic and uncoordinated. He makes sounds he doesn't recognize, grunting like a wounded animal as saliva dampens the fabric pressed against his face. His brain whitens as John croons to him how good he’s doing, how perfect he is, orgasm building like a storm front.
When it hits, the bliss is quiet but enormous, washing over him and soaking his fingers. The orgasm obliterates every rational thought in his head, leaving him weightless and drowsy. His body goes limp with a bone-deep satisfaction.
Fingers card through his hair, then tighten and tug at his scalp, making him raise his head. John looks down at him, his eyes clear. Present.
“Go wash up,” he says, his voice back to its normal register. “And bring your things to my room.”