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Summary: A secret mission. A formal gala. Two agents that hate each other. What could go wrong?
Words: 2105
Warnings: Suggestive dancing, Jake Seresin as a secret agent.
Credits: @princessmisery666 for beta reading this, @ryebecca for being the absolute best hype woman and twin that I could ask for. My ride or dies 💕
A/N: This has been in my drafts for a bit now. I found it when I found the other Jake story and…it was finished too. I hope you enjoy.
The mission couldn’t be worse. Not only was she paired with her worst enemy, they had to make everyone believe that they were a couple on their honeymoon, madly in love with one another. She was a skilled agent, one of the best, but even she had no idea how they would be able to pull it off.
Jake Seresin, code name Hangman, had made his feelings abundantly clear from the moment they were introduced. He thought little of her, making demeaning comments about her abilities, her skills, and her training. Though, he claimed, it was never because she was a woman.
He dismissed every idea or strategy she proposed, often tearing them down publicly, causing a fight that only ended when one of their bosses intervened. He walked away smug, calm, collected while she was visibly seething. On multiple occasions her colleagues pointed out where he wormed his way under her skin, undermined her confidence, and worst of all, she let it affect her; it was then that she decided she hated Jake Seresin.
They had been at the hotel undercover for three days, playing the perfect couple in public, barely speaking behind the room’s closed door. She was grateful for the foresight of the planners to book a suite with a closed off bedroom. She took it over quickly, citing the need for privacy to dress and prepare.
Jake balked at first, whether out of true opposition or the need to be contrary she didn’t know. Regardless, his choice was removed as soon as she slid the doors shut.
Night three happened to be the night of the gala that they had been sent to infiltrate. She was getting dressed, ignoring the way Jake continued to give updates on the time through the closed door. As her lipstick glided across her bottom lip, a knock echoed through her suite.
“How long can it possibly take to get ready?” Jake sassed, “the gala started half an hour ago.”
“Beauty takes time, Hangman,” she replied.
“There isn’t enough time in the day to make you as beautiful as some of the women I’ve seen here,” he muttered under his breath, fidgeting with his watch before he called, “just…hurry up.”
“Why don’t you pull the stick out of your ass and head down to the bar. I’ll meet you there.”
“Fine. But I will handle this without you if you don’t hurry.”
She let out a sigh of relief when the door slammed shut, taking a moment to enjoy the silence before she had to go downstairs to the stuffy ballroom and pretend to be madly in love with a man she detested, one that also despised her.
Jake had been down in the ballroom for ten minutes and had already spotted their target and devised a plan to complete their mission. When another ten minutes had passed with no appearance from his partner, he felt an uneasiness settle in the pit of his stomach. He rested his glass of scotch on the bar and allowed his eyes to sweep over the room again before he went searching for her.
The sounds echoing off of the walls faded to nothing and Jake followed the way everyone’s heads had turned to the door. He stood up straighter while his jaw fell, his gaze raking up and down the body of his partner scanning the crowd.
A blinding smile spit her face in two and she began moving across the room, every gaze following her path.
Jake’s ears picked up the middle of a chord change and realized that the music and conversation hadn’t actually stopped; his senses blocked them out when he caught sight of his partner. Seeing her in a different environment, a formal setting, sparked a reckoning that had not previously crossed his mind.
The beauty that radiated from her stirred a warmth and giddiness in his chest, one that intensified with every step she took towards him. Her smile faded to a smirk and his heart skipped a beat. Jake became intensely aware that in the last minute or two he hadn’t needed to act like the doting newlyweds they were supposed to be.
She was stopped by a man with wavy hair and a mustache before she could make it to Jake’s corner of the bar. He felt an anger rising up as the man brushed a strand of hair back, caressing her bare shoulder as her hand covered her giggle. An unfamiliar sensation washed over him and he abandoned his drink, stalking over with his shoulders back and his chest puffed out.
His arm slipped around her waist as he made it to his date. He pressed a kiss to her temple, cooing, “there you are gorgeous.” His eyes focused on the way she looked up at him, wishing for half a second the desire he saw there was real. “I was beginning to think I’d have to come find you. Actually, I was counting on it. Finding you locked up in our room with alternative plans for the evening.”
“And just who are you?” the mustached man asked, ire and disdain lacing his tone.
“I’m her husband,” Jake answered as his grip on her waist tightened, his fingertips digging into her soft hips. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, I need to make sure my wife knows how beautiful she looks tonight.”
Jake pulled her away to the dance floor, twirling her into his chest as he slipped his hand in hers.
“That was far from subtle, Hangman,” she mumbled quietly.
“Aren’t I supposed to be playing the doting husband?”
“The doting husband doesn’t have to be insanely jealous and try to mark his territory in front of a room full of strangers,” she countered, a smirk crossing her lips as her brows rose in challenge.
“When you look the way you do tonight, any husband would want to mark his territory, doting or not,” he replied sincerely, dipping her low as the song ended.
Her eyes searched his face for a sign, for something, for anything that might clue her in to his actual thoughts. All she found was a softness lingering in his slight smile, a hunger in the narrow eyes that flitted down from her eyes to her lips.
The tempo shifted as a new song began and he pulled her upright, stopping her when she tried to leave the dance floor.
“Jake, I can’t dance to this,” she hissed as he spun her around, pulling her back flush to his chest.
“I can,” he muttered against her neck, sending shivers up her spine. “Follow my lead.” His right foot slipped between hers and kicked them apart, a smirk dancing on his face at the gasp she tried to hide.
Jake led her in a tango, twirling and dipping her, his hands wandering over her body as they moved across the dance floor. She followed his lead fluently, her moves becoming second nature as she leaned into the trust she had for the partner who was surprising her this evening.
A heat built between them, the fire in their eyes as passionate as ever, spreading throughout their bodies with every touch, every glance, every whiff of their scent. By the end of the dance, when Jake had their chests pressed against each other, their panting breaths mingling millimeters from their faces, he could no longer hide the fact that he was attracted to her tonight. The evidence was pressed tightly into her hips.
“Seresin,” she hissed under her breath as his hands gripped her tightly. The crowd around them applauded wildly, all eyes she could see focused on them in the middle of the dance floor.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered, his eyes darting between hers anxiously.
She waited a beat before nodding slightly, feeling the tension in his shoulders release.
“Just a second, then.” His hand slid up her back, pressing between her shoulder blades, holding her tighter as his head dipped to her ear. “I have eyes on the target.”
“I’m assuming my six,” she muttered back with a grin.
“He’s at the bar. You step out onto the terrace and block that exit.”
“And let you get all the credit? I don’t -”
“Do you trust me?” he repeated. His grip loosened when she nodded and he led her off the dance floor, pressing a kiss to her temple as they reached the balcony doors. She stepped out of the door and he turned to the bar, letting out a curse as his eyes widened.
The mark had vanished.
The breeze sent shivers up her spine. The entire situation had her on edge. Hangman had a reputation for leaving his partners high and dry and taking all the credit for the mission himself. The soft click of footsteps prompted her to release a tense breath, her shoulders relaxing as she turned. “Jake, I thought -”
She stopped short when she saw their mark, his face adorned with a dark grin.
“I’m sorry to disappoint. But I must say, you look beautiful this evening,” the mark said as he buttoned his jacket.
Two additional men materialized from the shadows and advanced towards her, causing her to take steps backwards. Her heart thudded in her chest and her breathing became labored, gasping for oxygen to fill lungs that fought expansion. There had been no training for a situation where you’re being approached directly on a balcony.
A piece of tape covered her mouth and a black bag draped over her head before she could scream.
The mark disappeared. Jake swore under his breath as he scanned the room again fruitlessly. There was no sign of him anywhere. His eyes widened and he darted for the balcony door. His stomach fell to the floor as he stepped out onto an empty terrace, the lingering smell of her perfume the only sign she had ever been there.
“Shit,” he swore while he pulled out his phone. “Shit fuck fuck shit.”
Dialing a contact, he paced frantically across the small space, counting the steps he took back and forth. One, two, three, four, turn.
“Control.”
“Fucking finally,” Jake barked into the phone. “I need extraction for myself and the location on my partner.”
“I’ll need approval from your mission leader for those,” the tech on the other end of the phone explained.
“No, what you need to do is find her. I think she was taken by the mark.”
Agonizing minutes passed while he waited on hold with control. The sound of a helicopter landing on the rooftop next door drowned out the response of control and spurred Jake into motion. In one swift motion, he climbed onto the iron railing and jumped to the neighboring building, his shoulder taking the brunt of the landing and propelling him into a roll. Pulling his pistol from his holster, he approached the chopper, finding that the occupants had evacuated and left the pilot.
He raised his weapon and stepped into view. “You’re flying me now.”
The pilot looked at him and shrugged, flipping a few switches and handing over a headset as Jake settled into the front seat. “Where to?”
Jake only had an inkling of where the mark would have taken her, and barely a guess as to what they were driving but he had to do something, anything. If he didn’t…well he refused to think about the possibilities.
The duct tape over her mouth chafed as she wiggled her lips, trying to loosen the tape enough to moisten the area and get the tape off. The zip ties they placed around her wrists cut deeply as she shifted. She took deep breaths to counter the rising panic in her chest; she had been trained for this. She knew what to do.
“You really shouldn’t struggle so much. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
She couldn’t tell which of her abductors had decided to comment on her escape attempts, but he was on her left. The black cloth they had placed over her face was melting the meticulous makeup she applied before the gala and it pissed her off that she didn’t even get a picture before it was all ruined. Defeated, she slumped back against the seat, her shoulders squeezed between two of the giant men that had taken her hostage.
Her mind reeled with details from her training, what to do, when to do it. She had been in dangerous situations before but this time, something was preventing her from acting.
This time, she was the collateral. This time, she was relying on someone else to rescue her. And that was terrifying.
BIG WINDOWS, SMALL KITCHEN | a bungalow!Bob Floyd universe
When you invite your boyfriend Robert "Bob" Floyd to move into your green bungalow with the unkempt yard, he makes it his entire personality. Well, that, and being in the background of any and all of your Zoom calls.
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THE UNIVERSE
so hold me close and say three words / There's only one thing that can get your boyfriend's mind off the horrible popcorn ceiling.
A/N: I just wanted to say this is like an off shoot of my high school au of them as adults!!! So I’ll provide more lore at any request that’s mentioned in here!
MOTA Masterlist!
Curt had to click together in his mind whether he had died and woke up in heaven or if this really was his life. Ken sat by the window with his knee pulled up to his chest, his chin resting on it. A paintbrush rested between his dainty fingers, dancing a light shade of yellow over the canvas. He blinked a few times to clear the morning fog out, Ken still sat there with the early morning Italian sunlight kissing his bare shoulders.
“Good morning, Curtie.” Ken glanced over to him from where he sat. The remnants of last night's clothes and Curt’s prosthetic tossed onto the floor next to the bed. The soft white sheet haphazardly lay on Curt’s waist, his thigh peaking out just slightly.
“Surprised you’re awake.” Curt rubbed his eyes resting his arm on the pillow staring at the beautiful angel in the room. They decided to meet in Italy for Ken’s birthday. Curt had a flight to pilot there a couple days ago. Ken got off of work yesterday and flew from Wyoming to Orvieto, Italy, “Not jet lagged?”
“Slept on the flight. Slept hard for a couple hours after our love making. Decided to paint you.” Ken turned the canvas showing the beginning of a painting of him.
“Well you better be awake, Kennie we got a birthday wine tasting today.”
“Don’t remind me…I already felt extra crunchy when I got out of bed today.”
“Couldn’t stretch your legs on the flight?”
“Not everyone can have less legroom as an option.”
“Some of us are just lucky, well now you’re married into the luck of the Irish.” Curt winked rolling over in bed. “Come here.”
“Should I now?” Ken dropped the paintbrushes in the mason jar of water, swirling it around, turning the water a beautiful soft yellow.
“I’d recommend it.”
Ken smiled standing up off the floor and pulling the sheets off Curt. He leaned down running his cheek up to Curt’s mouth. “God I missed you, Curtie.”
“Missed you, doll face.” Cradling his jaw Curt stared up at his beautiful husband, “Lemme kiss you, come here.”
“Didn’t get enough last night?”
“I’m starving,” Curt mumbled out Ken sinking his lips into him balancing on his knees. The friction of his bare cock against Curt’s chest proved to cause some sort of sensations. Curt raked a hand into Ken’s golden curls tugging gently.
“Must’ve missed me?”
“Like you wouldn’t of fuckin’ believed, Kennie. I scoped out all the best spots in the Airbnb for us.”
“How kind of you,” Ken let out a little chuckle, tipping their foreheads together.
“Are you going to bend me over somewhere?”
“Of course, pretty boy.” Curt slid his hands down Ken’s thin waist to his hips, delivering a gentle squeeze.
“Right now I just want you on my cock, let the birthday boy go for a little ride, hm?” Curt purred, beginning to massage his thumb into Ken’s plump ass.
“Oh, I think I would like that.” Ken leaned over pressing his lips back into Curt’s, rocking his pelvis against his. The feeling of Ken’s perfect, soft skin providing a warm feeling for Curt inside of him.
Curt darted his tongue into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the others. The white gold heat of their dicks rubbing against the other Ken trying to pick up his pace.
“No, no, princess, you have to wait your turn.” Curt scooped up Ken’s hips off of his, the other man jerking forward slightly in Curt’s familiar calloused, rough hands.
“That’s unfair, it’s my birthday.” Ken pushed out his lip, softening his eyes.
“You don’t even want me to finger you?”
“Well…”
Curt snickered, reaching to the bedside table he had already prepared for their get away.
“You really thought ahead.”
“You know I did, sugar.” Curt snatched the travel size bottle of lube, “You want me to go slow, baby?”
“No,” Ken didn’t hesitate watching Curt squeeze out the clear gelish substance onto his fingers.
“Oh you whore, someone really is impatient.” Ken readjusted on his knees then laid his head back against Curt’s chests, “Ready birthday boy?”
“Mhm,” Ken murmured into his chest, feeling Curt’s fingers plunge inside of him with ease.
“Oh, hell.” He pushed his hips back into his fingers.
“Sit still,” Curt barked, pulling his fingers from Ken teasingly.
“Hmm.”
“Come on, pretty boy.”
“Ye…yes sir.”
Curt let his lips split into a small smirk, his cheeks running red hot. God he loved hearing those words leave his pretty, pink lips.
Sucking in a breath, Ken clenched down around Curt’s fingers. fighting everything inside to keep his hips still. Ken wanted to just let Curt hold his fingers there and just let him rock his hips back. Fucking his fingers until he came but that was not the case. Without even thinking Ken pushed his hips back into Curt’s hand just as he began to pick up his pace.
“Someone just can’t wait, can he? You just wanna ride me right now, you slut?” Curt pulled his fingers from Ken fast, whipping them on the sheets. Ken's mouth left slightly agape against Curt’s chest as he’s left empty and horny, “Hm I asked you a question?”
Ken turned a deep red, his cock twitching against Curt’s stomach. “Please, I need you so bad, Curtie.”
“Oh that’s my good boy right there.” Curt rubbed the others' hips, “Come on.”
“Yes, sir.” Ken nodded against his chest, sitting up with his hands resting on Curt’s pecks.
“Ready?”
“Mhm.”
Ken sat up on his knees letting Curt line him up perfectly with his entrance. The moment he felt his tip enter him he immediately lost it. Four days without Curtis Biddicks cock was some other worldly hell for him.
“Oh you feel amazing, darlin’.” Curt whined out grabbing onto Ken immediately as he began moving himself on his cock, “You’re such a gorgeous boy my beautiful, beautiful angel.” Curt stared up at the halo of morning sun swirling around Ken’s curls. Curt left a hand on his hips sliding his hand grabbing onto his cock.
“Oh hell,” Ken almost tumbled forward onto Curt but quickly caught himself on the bed frame.
“Must’a really liked that one?”
“Yes, sir.”
Curt let a wide, curling, devious smile enter into jerking his hand up on Ken’s cock again, “Oh, oh.” Ken stuttered out pushing a hand out against the bed frame.
“Mhm, you like that you little slut?” Curt growled pushing his hips into Ken’s as he sank down again. Ken threw his head back with a grunt as he finally let his body collapse forward onto Curt. His forearms resting on his chest, rocking his ass back and forth in attempted movements.
“Oh my god…Curt.” Ken whimpered into his chest, mouthing at him and nipping, his hips rocking. Curt almost balls deep inside of him right when he felt Curt hit his spot, “Please keep going. Mhm…”
“Oh you asked so nicely for it, who am I to deny you your orgasm?” Curt bucked his hips up causing Ken to feel the white, hot tension in his stomach tighten arching his back as he clenched his teeth together. “Come on, let me see your pretty eyes.”
Ken pushed his hips back hard as Curt grabbed Ken’s jaw forcing him to make eye contact. “So fuckin’ gorgeous and it’s all just for me, yeah?”
“Yes, Curtie. Oh my god.” Ken could barely form words moving his hips back and forth his cock in Curt’s hand. The white substance seeped from his tip, “m’ so close, daddy.”
“What was that, baby?”
“Daddy, I’m so close.” Ken felt the hot tears pricking his eyes, grabbing onto Curt’s shoulders and smashing his face into his collarbone.
“Do you want me to,”
“Please, oh my god, please!” Ken cut him off sinking his nails into his shoulders leaving little crescent moon indents.
“Cum for me you beautiful little whore.” Curt growled into Ken’s ear, the other releasing all over his hand, his body going rigid.
“I fucking love you, Kenny.” Curt murmured, filling Ken with the warm substance, Ken repeatedly clenching down into him his mouth agape. Ken laid on Curt’s chest while he rode out the aftershocks, Ken slowly mouthing at Curt his pink lips making a soft hum against him.
“I love you too,” Ken smiled. He felt literal euphoria. The sun lightening them golden, Curt’s soft skin on his cheek, and his big calloused hands on his hips. He felt like he was in heaven and he wanted to stay here forever.
Then the loud howling from outside the door started, “It’s your turn to let him out.”
“It’s my birthday!” Ken broke a wide smile on his cheeks and gently slapped Curt’s chest. He rolled off of Curt and watched him sit up and grab for his prosthetic. “Thank you.”
“Hm?” Curt turned, raising an eyebrow at Ken.
“For the sex.”
“It’s your first birthday present,” Curt stepped into his prosthetic and placed a kiss on Ken’s forehead.
“Well, unless it’s Barry Keoghan I don’t know if anything will be better than that…” Ken rested a hand on his chest and held a hand out for Curt.
“I can do the impression but I don’t see the resemblance.” Curt kissed Ken’s knuckles and grabbed for his boxers. Ken started giggling but quickly interrupted by Humvee starting his barking again.
“I’ll be right there Hums.” Curt tripped over himself putting on the boxers and caught that door handle before he could fall.
“Be careful.”
“Love you, oh and.” Curt stopped leaning on the door frame and tapped it, “Happy birthday my angel.”
Fandom: Masters of the Air
Rating: T
Word Count: 2228
Summary:
Tired of the pin-up girls, Alex draws Buck Cleven in a similar style, never intending for the sketch to fall into the hands of Bucky Egan.
“You even lookin’ at that paper? Ain’t seen you look at that paper in five minutes.”
Alex smiled to himself as he redirected his gaze to the sketch he was working on. Macon was right: he hadn’t been looking. He didn’t need to. He’d done half a dozen of these sketches already since getting forced into this camp and they were all the same—a collection of curves. Eyes, cheeks, lips. Shoulders, breasts, waist. Hips, thighs, calves. Little round rear, if the request came with a specification for that kinda thing. He had his style. He could draw pin-ups in his sleep.
“I thought your neck didn’t work,” he reminded Macon without twisting his own to look up at him in the higher bunk. “Guess it works just fine for snoopin’ over my shoulder.”
“‘Snoopin’’?” Macon echoed, sounding affronted. “Bullshit, snoopin’. Ain’t no privacy here to violate, Alex. You don’t want me to be able to see over your shoulder, you better go sit on the roof.”
Alex released a soft snort and kept sketching. His latest connoisseur of provocative art wanted a brunette. That was easy enough; Alex added a quick outline of hair—more curves—and shaded it in.
“You get tired of that?” Macon asked a few minutes later. Apparently, he’d abandoned the book Alex had brought him.
“Why, you get tired of the smokes these boys are payin’ me to draw ’em?” Alex shot back.
“Not drawin’—drawin’ that. Your little paper dolls.”
Paper dolls. Alex hadn’t thought of it like that. (He liked Macon too much to be insulted; even if he had been insulted, it wouldn’t be enough to put even the smallest dint in the loyalty they had to one another. Nobody was going to watch out for them like they’d watch out for each other.) The drawings were sweet, in a way, with the coy smiles and O’s of surprise on the girls’ mouths, with the way their delicate fingers twirled telephone cords and pressed with childlike thoughtfulness into their dimpled chins. They belied what the boys who asked for them claimed to want: somethin’ sexy to look at while they pulled themselves off whenever they were alone. Or felt alone. Or even felt alone enough.
No, Alex knew what he was really giving them: a little reminder of tenderness. Tenderness even above femininity, because only one guy had asked him to draw a gal in something see-through, another in a negligée (Like Rita Hayworth in Life, he’d said), and the rest had just wanted to see anything that wasn’t a uniform. Props? A tray of muffins coming out of an oven, a basket of kittens, a field of wildflowers. Things that spoke of home comforts and abundance, that evoked softness and pleasing scents. If these drawings of his were like paper dolls, it made sense, because the boys were playing with them—playing make-believe. And so Alex didn’t mind that he’d done six of these already. It made the white boys happy. It passed the time. It kept him and Macon in whatever pitiful item counted as a luxury on this day, this week. If Alex were to be here as long as some of the boys had been here already, he figured it’d help having something to occupy his mind.
“Not yet,” he said, and drew a pair of sunglasses dangling from the girl’s hand, then put a look on her face like she knew you’d watch her bend down to pick them up when she inevitably dropped them. “Anyway, what else would I draw?”
“Pin-up Hitler?”
They both cracked up.
“Alright, alright,” Macon said as their laughter trailed off. “How ’bout these boys?”
Alex lifted his pencil from the paper. That was another one done.
“Our boys?” he checked distractedly, examining his work.
In the silence that followed his words, he could just about hear Macon rolling his eyes.
“The boys in this bunkroom,” Alex corrected.
“Yeah. Think you could draw ’em?”
At this, Alex swivelled around to look at Macon, eyes narrowed and unimpressed.
“Of course I could, but I shouldn’t.” Expression clearing, he raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Don’t you want them to like us? Trust us?”
“Maybe I don’t like or trust them,” Macon replied. Alex sighed, then Macon added, “I never said show the drawings. Just do it for our entertainment, shit.”
“And what are you paying me in for this entertainment?”
“In the promise that I won’t snitch to the white boys that you doin’ pin-ups of ’em,” Macon said, chuckling.
Alex grinned and shook his head.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Well, you know. If you ain’t too busy.”
They laughed harder this time, until Macon swore and laid back, rubbing his neck.
Alex did think for a while. He sat there thinking, then got up and walked over to the window to take a look at the bleak view as he thought some more, then sat again. His pencil was there on his bunk. He had more paper. The other guys from their bunkhouse weren’t about—walking someplace, or scheming, maybe. Buck Cleven had let Alex in on the general idea of a breakout, which was significant, but he knew he was still a newcomer, still on the outside.
It was that frustration that made Alex pick up the pencil. It was the fact that Buck had been the only one to initiate a conversation with him that made Alex choose him as his subject. He just knew his face best, had looked at it openly while they’d talked. Round eyes, full mouth. Not so different from his regular paper dolls.
When Egan and Brady wandered in, Alex calmly slipped the sketch of Buck behind the commissioned drawing of the brunette with the sunglasses. When he got the chance, he’d hide it someplace better, but he doubted there was a more suspicious group on earth than his fellow kriegies; if he tried now, it’d give them reason to distrust him, and if they discovered what he was attempting to conceal... it would be hard to explain.
He retraced lines he’d already drawn, darkened the girl’s hair. Brady and Egan were playing cards on the other side of the room. Alex was thinking about casually lying back and pulling out a book he might tuck the drawing of Buck into when DeMarco swung through the doorway and announced Nazis were ordering men out of the neighbouring hut to toss the rooms.
If he hadn’t had to help Macon down from the higher bunk, Alex might’ve had time. If he could’ve done more than flip the pages over, they might not’ve been noticed. If he hadn’t submitted to Egan’s authority as a superior officer and let him be the last out of the room, ensuring the rest of them got out safely, Alex might not’ve worried as he stood outside in the cold, waiting for Egan to follow them out. Waiting, it seemed, for too long before Egan stepped out and the Nazis shoved past him on their way in.
When it was over, Alex walked back inside to find that one of the pages he’d left on his bunk was no longer there.
—
Bucky leaned against the side of the hut, fingering the folded paper in his pocket. He’d creased it in half quickly, and the edges didn’t line up, giving his fingers something to worry as he stood there, mind swooping and turning like one of the planes the man to whom the paper belonged flew.
It hadn’t been nosiness driving Bucky across the room once DeMarco, Brady, Jefferson, and Macon were out. It hadn’t been mere curiosity. Bucky knew Buck had spoken to the new guy, Jefferson, about helping them work out the topography surrounding the camp. Bucky’s fear, when he saw those pages left behind, was that one of them might have featured some kind of map. And then all their gooses would’ve been cooked. The Nazis would’ve known they were thinking of escape more seriously than a distant fantasy that involved a place to get a steak dinner instead of the crap food that barely kept them alive. Rifling swiftly through Jefferson’s pages was self-preservation—the preservation of the whole group of them. Bucky hadn’t expected to find what was now in his pocket.
Looking at it made him less sure of how to feel, and so he kept teasing himself instead, stroking the edges of the page without taking it out of his coat. Part of what he felt was relief; since it wasn’t a map Jefferson had been drawing, there had been no close call. It also meant Jefferson wasn’t stupid, hadn’t left anything so valuable, so incredibly damning, sitting out in the open like a present for their jailers. But that line of thinking got tangled up with another of the emotions the paper provoked in him: impulsive, hot-headed fury that Jefferson would do a thing like that, would draw Buck like that. Bucky wanted to demand Jefferson tell him who the hell he thought he was to put that down on paper. Only, a confrontation would’ve escalated immediately into a scene—Bucky didn’t trust himself to handle it coolly, not this—which would likely mean having to explain exactly why he was so angry with Jefferson. Buck would see the drawing. Onlookers would see a fracture in their group and think they were weak. It was no fucking good, and so Bucky stood there touching the paper until he couldn’t stand it any longer and, after glancing up and down the corridor between the huts, slipped the page out for further scrutiny.
It was a good likeness; Bucky had known it was Buck right away. If he fought back all the other complex feelings he had about it, he could appreciate that Jefferson had a talent. Bucky cast his gaze around again, then permitted himself to enjoy the drawing on the basis of its artistic merit alone. That was certainly the shape of Buck’s face. Those eyes could belong to no other. He could see what Jefferson had intended with the pose—Buck’s chest thrust forward, his ass pushed out—but it wasn’t as exaggerated as many pin-ups Bucky had seen, and there was still a recognizable Buck-ness in the set of the shoulders, the way the forearms crossed and rested on the bent knee. Jefferson had put Buck in the room they called the library, one of Buck’s shoes planted on a chair as he stared unflinchingly at his observer, those eyes that could belong to no other set in the face with a shape Bucky knew well. And the mouth. The mouth was unmistakably Buck’s too. Like this, Buck could acknowledge what a pretty mouth it was, how swell it would’ve looked on any female pin-up model, but how right it was on the face of his best friend.
Bucky swallowed and refolded the paper. He undid his coat just enough to stuff the drawing into the breast pocket of his shirt, a little closer to his body, a little more secure, he told himself. He possessed no plan for what he’d do with it. Buck, of course, could never see. Jefferson sure as hell wasn’t getting it back; Bucky decided that having to wonder what had happened to the drawing would have to be sufficient punishment for having the nerve to do it in the first place. In a tight moment, Bucky knew he might have to eat the paper. He might have to chew and swallow, forcing Buck’s confident stare and plump lips down his throat. He would hold this depiction of Buck inside himself, break him down and digest him. No one could take it from him. No one would know.
He sniffed and flicked a finger across the end of his nose. He strolled along in the shadow of the hut and, just before stepping out into the pale winter sunshine, pressed his hand to his chest over the place where the drawing rested. No one would know.
Conscious of the need for his shoes to not wear out in case the ideal escape conditions presented themselves, Bucky kept his steps light as he crossed the dirt yard. One of the guards was watching him and Bucky offered a sarcastic smile.
“Beautiful day, huh, Fritz?”
He kept walking until he found Buck. It seemed he was always walking until he found Buck.
They were not yet out of things to say to one another, and there were always new silences to not fill. They could talk close—what petty grievances did they have about the smell of Crank’s socks, the way Murphy had started chewing his fingernails?—and they could talk far—making up baseball scores for the teams back home. Bucky was comforted by their talk, by the undemanding presence of Buck at his side.
Buck was talking to Jefferson, and when Bucky sidled up, he slung an arm around Buck’s shoulders, feeling the paper in his pocket crumple slightly. He looked at Buck as he carried on speaking like Bucky was no interruption. He watched Buck’s lips move, listened to the low, slow, sure sound of his voice. Feeling Jefferson’s eyes on him, Bucky shifted his gaze and stared back. I’ll keep your secret, he told Jefferson with a lift of his eyebrows, and you keep mine.
“Come on, Buck, keep pace with us,” John mutters as he watches the squadron flying behind them. He knows he has to stay calm, has to stay focused, but the farther they creep into Kraut territory, the more John’s thoughts veer helplessly towards Gale.
It’s not long before they’re ambushed by fighter pilots - far too many to count. They swarm the air like viscous wasps, intentions coated with violence. John can practically taste their hunger to kill as they surround the American planes. The Germans slip in from all sides, tearing apart formations with their high velocity bullets like the flying fortresses are made of paper mache.
Amidst the assault, John hears Gale’s name through the comms. Alert and anxious, he swivels around to peer out the window of the B-17, searching. John’s heart jolts into his throat. Gale’s fort has been hit. Agitation and concern electrify the ends of his nerves, lighting him up from the inside out. Gale’s fort has been hit.
Without thinking, John scrambles towards the back of the plane, fingers itching with murder. Fear and fury rampage against each other within his veins, clouding his mind. He pushes Murph aside and grips the machine gun with trembling hands. Red spots swim in his vision as he targets the Luftwaffe, soul salivating for their demise. He mercilessly fires upon the enemy fighter pilots, outraged that they continue to target Gale. How fucking dare they.
Carnage surrounds them as they fly through the flak. B-17s erupt in massive clouds of smoke and fire. Crews leap from their wounded planes, desperate to survive. Airmen swing from parachutes, vulnerable to the bullets whizzing through the air. Bodies explode and break apart in bursts of crimson as they slam against forts, unable to change their trajectory, unable to avoid such gruesome, gory deaths.
Time slows to a crawl as John ceaselessly fires the machine gun. He’s hyper focused, consumed by a burning revenge, consumed by a primal urgency to protect Gale’s fort from the German fighters that circle them like starving sharks in blood-infested waters.
Finally, the Luftwaffe retreat, fuel running too low to continue their deadly hunt. John pries his quivering hands from the smoking machine gun in front of him and collapses to the floor. He tries to blink away the red clouding his vision as his lungs heave for air. They manage to drop their bombs on the factory, a successful mission. Still, John cannot swallow down the dread that has infected his body. Cannot tear his distressed thoughts away from Gale.
“Is Cleven’s fort still with us?” he asks, eyes glued to the blue sky around them, as if Gale’s plane might emerge from the clouds at any moment, safe and sound.
“They’re beat to shit and trailing way behind, but they’re still with us.” Intense relief causes John to nearly go boneless. He closes his eyes briefly and repeats the words in his mind. Gale is okay. Gale is still with them.
Miraculously, they land in Africa. As soon as John’s feet hit the ground, he turns to wait for his friend. He watches the distant sky with intense focus, feeling suspended in that singular moment. Dread and hope clash against each other, sending the electrical currents in John’s brain into overdrive. He feels himself nearly shaking apart, feels himself nearing the edge of a precipice – because it’s all or nothing.
Finally, Gale’s plane glides into view. At last, John’s heart has returned to him. He rushes to a jeep, blood pounding through his veins. He has to see him, has to make sure he’s okay. When John pulls up, Gale is helping his injured crew from the torn apart fortress. He leaps out of the jeep, barking out orders to help the wounded, then watches Gale carefully from a few feet away. He’s banged up, but John doesn’t notice any severe wounds. He clenches his fists and keeps his distance as he drinks Gale in with hungry eyes, all too aware that they are not alone.
“I don’t know how you flew that thing all the way to Africa, but you couldn’t make the runway,” John says, feeling like he might collapse when Gale finally makes eye contact with him. God, he is so beautiful. John can’t help the affectionate smile that blooms on his face as he forces himself to not reach out for the other man. “It’s right there.”
Gale doesn’t reply and walks a few steps away, looking for the rest of his crew. John follows after him, like a moth to a flame, but his heart drops when he sees the body the other men are carrying.
“Who is it?” He asks quietly, eyes glued to the mutilated corpse of the airman.
“Norman Smith, radio operator,” Gale replies, voice husky with sorrow and regret. John swallows down the bile that rises in his throat. Even though he knows that Gale is still reeling from the loss, John can’t help but to imagine the roles reversed. What if that had been Gale, blown apart? What if John never saw him again?
“I lost four forts,” Gale says, tearing him away from his spiraling thoughts. John watches as the blonde aimlessly wanders away from the plane, eyes empty.
John turns after him, trailing behind, “I know.”
John can see that Gale is drowning in his grief, still shocked from the bloodshed he’d barely managed to escape. He glances back at the few men left that are still checking on the plane, irritated that they aren’t gone. His fingers itch with the need to touch Gale, to feel his heart beating beneath his palm. He wants to hold him and comfort him, wants to climb inside his skin and live there forever. But not yet.
“We’re gonna get through this. Come on, don’t stop believing that,” John says, trying to pull Gale back to him, away from that battle where Gale can only re-experience the demise and suffering of his squadron, of his men, of his friends.
“Sure, Bucky,” Gale says, but John can tell he doesn’t believe it.
Gale turns towards the setting sun, blue eyes dimmed and distant. John glances backwards one more time and breathes a sigh of relief when he notices they're finally alone. He reaches out his hand and twines his fingers through Gale’s. The man beside him barely twitches, still staring out towards the mountains that have begun to shroud the sun. John tugs Gale around to face him and places a gentle hand on his injured cheek. Gale stares at him, eyes still glazed over with anguish. John slowly presses forward to lean his forehead against Gale’s and strokes his jaw with his thumb.
“It’s you and me, Buck,” he whispers, his love for this man spilling out from every pore on his body.
He hopes that Gale knows that John would do anything for him, go anywhere for him. Without Gale, there’s no life worth living. John has been completely and utterly bewitched by the man in front of him since the moment they met. For John, there can be no one else. He patiently waits for Gale to see him, to come back to him. Finally, Gale’s eyes focus and he squeezes John’s hand that’s still linked with his.
“You and me,” he softly repeats, eyes fluttering closed as John tilts his head and presses his lips firmly against Gale’s.
» blue above the green masterlist - john egan x gale cleven ☆
↳ the last place that john egan wants to be the summer before he graduates high school is the egan family cottage, a place where time and everyone else seems to have forgotten. having been intent on finding a summer job, spending time with his friends, going to parties, and making out with pretty girls, john is irked that the egan family matriarch has other ideas and wants the family to spend “one last” summer together.
john’s sour mood shifts just a little when he meets local, but also not-so-local, gale cleven, a boy his age who works at the small town’s one pizza joint. through teenage angst and a desire to break free of the awkward position of not being children anymore but not yet men, the two form a bond that makes their summer a little more bearable. a bond that comes to shock the both of them.
but what happens when more than the summer comes to an end?
─── *✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ: ───
✧ one shot:
» night terror - john egan x gale cleven ◊△☆
↳ while resting during the march from the stalag to the train, gale helps john sleep. after the war, john returns the favour.
summary: while resting during the march from the stalag to the train, gale helps john sleep. after the war, john returns the favour.
warnings: mature, minors do not interact! semi-public sex, hand jobs, frottage, ptsd, and the horrors of war.
word count: 3.7k
author's notes: i am cross eyed from banging this out over the course of a couple of hours save for a couple of paragraphs. i didn't think i could do this anymore. apparently i just need sunshine and the largest iced coffee that i can stomach before barfing to fuel me.
many thanks to @swifty-fox for yelling at me in all caps while i wrote this. shout out to laura marling's "night terror" for being a loose inspiration and letting me steal both the title and a lyric even if she doesn't know i did that.
» read on ao3
February 1945
Gale couldn’t sleep.
Both in the sense that he agreed to stay awake, and even if he could have slept, he wasn’t sure that he would have been able to. They’d found an abandoned farm house to take shelter in for the night between leaving the stalag and heading to wherever their next destination was, and while it assisted in keeping the snow out, it did nothing to protect himself and the rest of the men from the bitter cold.
John had, in a moment of brilliance, grabbed a blanket before they left, and the two men made good use of it, as threadbare as it was. The two men huddled together beneath it, using each other for warmth more so than the blanket itself. Dire as their circumstances were, they were both silently and secretly grateful for the excuse to get closer together out in the open; they were not the only two cuddling for warmth. “Weather purposes” as John had put it.
“I can’t sleep,” John grumbled into Gale’s chest.
Gale’s jaw clicked, his eyes fixed on the German soldier who stepped over bodies in various states of slumber and wakefulness as he made his rounds. “Try, John,” he murmured quietly, chin resting on top of his friend’s head. “It’ll be my turn soon and I don’t want to hear your bellyaching.”
John snorted, and despite the layers of clothing between them, Gale could feel the way his lips quirked upward into a small smile against him.
The upside to being a prisoner of war, with every single day and night being a test of their ability to survive? Being able to be close to one another, like this, with no judgment. They weren’t the only ones holding one another for warmth, the only ones who shared a bunk from time to time back at the stalag. That they couldn’t have this elsewhere without someone raising eyebrows was terribly unfair.
The downside? Everything else.
Gale didn’t have the heart to tell John that he had actually nodded off for a couple of hours already. He knew that their sleep had been dreamless and restless for over a year. And that was the best that anyone could hope for. The worst were of course the nightmares, the night terrors, men bolting upright in their bunks sweating, screaming.
He and John had been two of the lucky ones.
At least so far.
Gale’s hands idly soothed over John’s back, hoping that the gentle touch would lull him back to sleep. John shivered against him, and Gale couldn’t tell if it was from his touch or the cold. He hoped that it was the former, but the bitter cold was likely stronger than John’s desire for Gale and his touch.
In the depths of his mind, he liked to imagine that they were back stateside, before John shipped out, bed sheets tangled around them, touching one another slow, sweet, soft. Not the hurried manner which they went about it all since Gale had arrived in England. They stole moments together whenever they could, no longer afforded the luxury of time. At least in the stalag they could make excuses for being close to one another, sharing a bed.
If anyone saw anything, no they hadn’t. And even if they had, they wouldn’t have said anything.
“S’nice,” John mumbled against Gale’s throat, as strong, sure hands rubbed over his back.
“I know,” Gale said, eyes darting about to make sure that there were no other eyes on them. If there were, they weren’t scrutinizing enough for him to take notice. The other men were too busy trying to keep themselves warm and sleep as well, the guards not truly giving a damn, concerned with their own warmth as well.
“Lower,” John said, his fingers curling in Gale’s thick coat. “And in the front as opposed to the back.”
Gale stilled for a moment, and then bumped John’s forehead with his own. “I know you’re not that foolish.”
“Maybe I am,” John retorted. He inhaled sharply, exhaled shakily. “You know it puts me to sleep. If that truly is your end goal here, Buck.”
He looked around once more, before meeting John’s gaze. “Are you crazy?” Gale hissed, teeth clenched. “Your insatiable damn lust will get us both killed.”
John smiled sadly, then ducked his head and nuzzled at Gale’s throat. “We’re as good as dead already, sweetheart.”
Even it was the truth, Gale wanted to continue foolishly believing that there still might be a shred of hope. That their stories didn’t end with them receiving bullets between the eyes, left to rot wherever the Germans saw fit. That he and John might live to see a few more sunrises, that they might see the end of the war, that they might go back home.
Despite Gale’s optimism, it seemed less and less likely that he would know anything but this ever again.
Gale watched as a guard literally stepped over his and John’s bodies to get to the front of the building, and for the moment he froze, waiting for them to pass. He turned his head, his back to the entrance of the farm house, and watched as the majority of the men tasked with guarding them stepped outside. There was a brief flicker of fire from a lighter, the flame passed around until all three cigarettes were lit. Gale turned back toward John, looking into his dark blue eyes, heavy lidded with exhaustion, and something else that he had only ever shown to Gale.
Neither of them spoke of it.
Gale pulled the glove off of one of his hands, and John shifted in front of him, wriggling excitedly. It was a moment later when Gale realized that it wasn’t excitement, it was John undoing his pants and pushing layers of fabric up, down, out of the way. Gale held John’s gaze as he spat discreetly into his palm, and John’s lips parted with a soft sigh before he caught his bottom lip between his teeth.
“For once in your life, be quiet,” Gale rasped, his hand disappearing beneath the blanket.
That insufferable, wolfish grin passed over John’s features, and if Gale was going to die that night he could think of no sweeter death than while making the man in front of him feel pleasure and happiness one last time.
Through the layers of clothing, his own and John’s, Gale’s fingers finally, blissfully, wrapped around John’s cock. Gale watched as John bit his lip so hard that for the moment he was terrified that his teeth would go through it. So focused had they been on their plan, on trying to make it out of the stalag alive, that they hadn’t found the time to do little more than give each others’ hand a squeeze in passing. Too long had it been since either of them had known the touch of the other somewhere a little more intimate.
“Quiet,” Gale reminded as he watched John’s lips part in a soft gasp.
“I know. I know,” John whispered hurriedly, before pressing his face into the long, delicate column of Gale’s throat. There had been a scarf in his way; Gale had felt John bite it to shift it out of his way.
Gale reminded himself that he needed to be quiet. The brush of John’s lips against his throat, an errogneous spot for him (that John had figured out, incidentally), had him wanting to roll onto his back, haul John on top of him, and arch beneath him until they both came, chasing a pleasure that they had never been rightly afforded, one that they were frightened to come to terms with perhaps never having again.
Some other time, perhaps.
Gale flexed his fingers, stiff from the cold, but thawing so close to the warmth of John’s body. John’s cock was thick, heavy, in his palm, just as it always had been. The normalcy of the act, despite the horror of the location, comforted Gale in a way that he hadn’t anticipated, and he let out his own quiet sigh, which he pressed into the knit cap that John wore.
He longed to press his face into those soft, wild, dark curls that he had come to love in the years since he’d met John.
“Buck,” John rasped against his throat, bringing him back from where he drifted off to. A place where they could be warm, soft.
Safe.
“I’m here,” Gale whispered, droplets of damp in John’s cap catching against his lips. The sickly sweet scent of John’s sweat, his musk, filled Gale’s nostrils, and his free hand clutched at the back of John’s coat.
John’s hips twitched against Gale’s fingers, his body, trying to move with him, trying to chase the high that he was so desperately seeking, that Gale was desperate to give to him. His lips were parted against Gale’s pulse point, attempting to quietly gasp for air, dropping tender kisses that were so warm that threatened to burn Gale alive. He welcomed it.
Gale dragged his spit along John’s shaft, thumb collecting the precome that gathered at the head and smeared it over his length. John muffled a soft, desperate sound against Gale’s skin, damp with sweat from the effort of trying to be quiet, be still, of finally discovering some manner of warmth, before lifting his head slightly, to peer over Gale’s shoulder.
“Hurry,” was all he said, and Gale knew that outside the butts of cigarettes were being stomped out beneath boots, that they were running out of time.
“Five seconds,” Gale gasped, before swallowing thickly. John had met his gaze, held it, and Gale swallowed past both a lump in his throat and a louder noise that threatened to escape. Gale flicked his wrist as John attempted to move quickly, and yet keep his movements imperceptible. “C’mon, John. You can do it.”
“Buck,” John breathed, lips centimetres from Gale’s. They both wanted it. But they couldn’t risk it. “Please.”
Gale had never heard John be so polite in all of the time that they knew one another. He craned his neck slightly and looked out of the corner of his eye, unable to see the Germans, but knowing that they were coming in from out of the cold.
“Five,” he whispered, turning back to John. His fingers, desperate to give John his release moved faster, and John chased them as best he could.
“Four.” Brushing against John’s balls, Gale could feel them draw up toward his body.
“Three.” Gale looked at John’s face, so fuckin’ happy to see his cheeks rosy with colour. He looked like he was burning up, too big, too warm for his skin. But it sure as hell beat the alternative that they currently faced.
“Two.” John’s eyelids began to slip closed, eyes rolling toward the back of his skull, head tipped back slightly, lips parted. Gale knew the expression that John wore as he came better than he knew how to fly a B-17.
“One.” Gale felt John’s spend slipping through his fingers, hot, sticky, and abundant. John’s lips were parted in a silent cry, as he carefully bucked his hips toward Gale’s touch.
In that moment Gale had been incredibly proud of John, mostly quiet throughout it all save for a few whispers and gasped breaths. He was an extremely noisy lover, and short of having something stuffed in his mouth could always be counted on to be loud. Even when discretion was key. John seemed to think that Air Force wouldn’t give a damn if he was a fairy, only one person flew planes better in his mind, and that was who he would be undoubtedly be found with.
Spent, John pressed himself against Gale, and his trembling body could easily be explained away with the cold. Gale held him close, eyes on the guards as they began to filter back into farm house, not daring to move, even if he could feel John’s come cooling and congealing on his hand. He was already absolutely filthy. If anyone noticed the slightly sweet smell of come, no one acknowledged it.
Gale managed to worm his hand out from under clothing, the blanket, and brought it to his mouth, licking and sucking his fingers clean. Not in an attempt to be seductive, but to clean himself. If John noticed, he didn’t say a word, instead looked down as he put his cock away, did his pants back up.
Grabbing the edge of the blanket, Gale pulled it up toward their chins, hoping his own movements would mask John’s. Satisfied with the state of himself, John glanced back up at Gale, giving him a fond smile. Gale managed one back.
“Roll over,” John murmured. “You can be the little spoon for once.”
Despite himself, Gale managed a small smile of his own, thoughts momentarily shifting toward a dear friend, who had once been John’s big spoon. It hadn’t been that long ago that the three of them had laughed into the phone together, and yet it might as well have been another lifetime.
Gale did as he was told, John’s strong arms wrapping around him and pulling him back against his chest. This way, Gale could keep an eye on the front door, on more of the men. The only downside of this position, as far as he was concerned, was that he could not see John’s face. He wasn’t sure how much longer that he would have the opportunity to commit it to memory, as if he hadn’t already.
He felt John’s body go lax against his, heard him snore into his shoulder, and smiled.
-
October 1945
John couldn’t sleep.
He often couldn’t. It was too quiet. He had gotten used to noise, whether it be the sounds of dozens of other men sleeping around him, bullets, bombs, and bigotry. It had been five long years of never being alone, to suddenly the sound of silence becoming a deafening thing.
Sitting up in their bed, knees to his chest, arms resting atop them, John corrected himself. He wasn’t alone.
John turned his attention from the moon hanging outside of their window to the restless figure beside him. Whatever sleep Gale had lost during the war, he was trying to find it in the house that they shared in Kansas. Not Wisconsin, not Wyoming. A fresh start, where no one knew them. They could be anonymous, buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere. Fix up an old house that had been lost to time. Two friends who had come back from the war, no longer used to being alone, needing the other to help quiet the noise in their head.
Tender as the thoughts of a quiet life together made him, it was Gale’s agitated frame that had John watching his lover like a hawk.
He knew what came next, and preferred to be awake for it instead of startled out of his sleep, feet on the creaky, old hardwood floors before his eyes had fully opened.
Gale bolted upright, screaming.
Had he been in his right mind, Gale would have known what came next as well. They had discussed it at length in the daylight, when the ghosts more or less left Gale alone.
The bed clothes fell away from John’s body as he straddled Gale’s thighs, large hands first on his shoulders, carefully anchoring him, bringing him back to the present, then moving to his back, drawing him closer. One hand mooring Gale against him, the other cradling the back of his head, bringing his face to the juncture where his shoulder and neck met. Gale would press his face into John’s shoulder until the screams subsided, sometimes turning into choked off, broken sobs, sometimes turning into ragged breaths. But always turning into a mumbled, “I’m sorry, John.”
To which John would always say, “Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry for, sweetheart.”
Had it truly been not even a year since the stalag? All of the horrors that they had seen, experienced?
Gale lifted his head, and John’s thumb swept over his cheeks, gathering the damp that leaked from his eyes. Neither of them were too proud to shy away from tears, their own and each other’s, at least with one another. Gale looked up at John pathetically, blue eyes wide, bright, and wet with unshed tears that he blinked away as quickly as he could.
“It’ll get better, won’t it?” Gale asked the older man, voice thick.
John’s mouth formed a thin line and he sighed. Neither of them knew. It didn’t stop Gale from asking.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Gale whispered, his hands reaching up and tangling in John’s hair, touching at his face.
“Look at you like what?” John asked, tilting toward Gale’s desperate and frantic touch. He knew what his love was doing; ensuring that he was still there, ensuring that he was real.
“Like I’m off my loop,” Gale replied, his eyes searching John’s.
“Think I’ll take you to the laughing farm if you are?” John asked, leaning in closer to Gale’s face.
Gale closed the distance between them, kissing John frantically. It was less a kiss, more Gale smashing their lips together so hard that John worried he might have chipped a tooth. His own or John’s.
“Don’t torment me,” Gale pleaded, and John instantly felt bad for attempting to soothe Gale’s mind with his usual antics.
John didn’t apologize, Gale hated it when he did, despite having done it moments ago himself. “What do you need, sweetheart?” he asked. The sentence hadn’t truly been completed, Gale’s mouth seeking out his again, the remainder of it dying between their lips.
“Make me forget them,” Gale replied, fingers searching for purchase against John’s chest, finding it in warm skin, wiry, dark curls. “Keep the ghosts away.”
Wrapping his arms around Gale’s slender frame, John pushed him back down onto their bed, covering Gale’s body with his own. His mouth descended upon Gale’s, forcing his lips apart with his tongue, licking inside until the tip of his tongue brushed against Gale’s molars. Gale clutched at his arms desperately, one leg hooking over his hip in attempt to keep him close, to keep him from moving away.
As if there were any place else in the world than John wanted to be than in a falling apart house in Kansas, wrapped up in the sheets and limbs of the man that he loved.
John felt Gale’s cock hard against his hip, and began to reach down between their bodies, only to have Gale’s long, elegant fingers wrap around his wrist. John lifted his head, alarmed, to find Gale shaking his head.
“No,” he rasped. “Not like that.”
Instead of asking what Gale would have preferred, John waited for Gale to show him. Gale reached between them, and John had half a mind to bat Gale’s hand away, but the thought turned to soup when Gale wrapped his fingers around John’s prick, guiding it against his own. John rolled his hips tentatively, face searching Gale’s for approval. Gale closed his eyes, breathless, and nodded. John repeated the motion, and was rewarded with the sweet sound of Gale’s moan.
In the middle of nowhere, they could be as loud as they wanted. They made up for the farm house, the stalag, the barracks, and everywhere else they had ever muffled the sounds that they made.
John moved slowly at first, cock already so wet just from the mere thought of even having Gale against him, grinding against his lover. Gale’s arms went around him, clutching at him, blunt edges of fingernails digging into his back, leaving crescent moon indentations in their wake. To go with all the other crescent moon indentations that he had left in recent days, nights.
Gale, not satisfied with sweet and slow, bucked beneath John, encouraging him to move faster, harder, letting out an annoyed little grunt at not being given what he wanted, impatient in his desire. Desire to feel pleasure, desire to forget.
“I’ve got you,” John breathed, hips snapping forward. He was rewarded with Gale’s sharp gasp, his body responding in kind. “Buck, I’ve got you.”
Gale smeared his mouth over John’s jawline, the days old stubble that he hadn’t bothered to shave, partially out of laziness, mostly out of Gale’s request. Evidently, he loved the burn. John’s eyelids fluttered shut, the leg draped over his hip urging him closer, even if there was nowhere for him to go.
John dragged his cock through the pool of gathering precome in Gale’s blonde pubic hair, his own mixed with Gale’s. Bracing one hand against the bed, the other tangled in Gale’s hair. Gale’s eyes, which had been closed, opened to meet John’s in a hazy gaze, begging him to not look away. John gave Gale a brusque nod, grunting as they moved together. Despite its desperateness, erraticness, it was a rhythym that they have perfected, one that was theirs.
Grunting, John movements became frenzied, and Gale’s lips fell open in soft, short gasps, head tipped back against the pillows. John was overcome with the urge to both bite at, and protect Gale’s vulnerable throat, tipping his head forward and mouthing along the pulse point that he had found so many times before.
“John. John,” Gale gasped, his lover’s name a mantra on his lips as his body tensed. He came beneath John with a cry that it sounded like he might asphyxiate on, coming across his own belly and chest.
John tumbled wordlessly after, moaning into Gale’s throat, tongue and teeth marking their rightful place against his skin, damp with sweat.
They laid there together in their bed, John’s body still atop Gale’s, pinning him, giving him the weight that he knew that Gale desperately craved. Gale’s touch over John’s arms became feather light, tender, bringing him back from the edge of the intensity that they had just experienced together. John turned his head, kissing at Gale’s fingertips, looking into the eyes of man fucked back toward the edge of sleep.
Satiated. Happy.
Safe.
“If they want you,” John whispered, lips still dancing over Gale’s fingers, “they’re going to have to fight me.”
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: the last place that john egan wants to be the summer before he graduates high school is the egan family cottage, a place where time and everyone else seems to have forgotten. having been intent on finding a summer job, spending time with his friends, going to parties, and making out with pretty girls, john is irked that the egan family matriarch has other ideas and wants the family to spend "one last" summer together.
john's sour mood shifts just a little when he meets local, but also not-so-local, gale cleven, a boy his age who works at the small town's one pizza joint. through teenage angst and a desire to break free of the awkward position of not being children anymore but not yet men, the two form a bond that makes their summer a little more bearable. a bond that comes to shock the both of them.
but what happens when more than the summer comes to an end?
𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: teen, though later chapters might have a slightly higher rating.
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 3.8k
likes / comments / reblogs are very much appreciated! thank you for reading! 💚
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» read on ao3.
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈.
“Ma! I’m going out!”
Ma Egan looked up from the book that she was reading on the back deck. It was early enough in the evening that there was still a lingering light from the setting sun, but cool enough that if you wanted to be outside that blanket across your lap might be required. John’s ma looked comfortable, and for a moment he thought about their conversation the day before and debated staying with her, the two of them reading in almost silence.
“Where ya goin’ out to?” Ma Egan asked, looking over the top of her reading glasses.
John spun the car keys around his index finger. “Headin’ out with someone I met in town yesterday.”
“Aww, see? You’re makin’ friends!” she said excitedly.
John rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Ma. It’s not like I’m a kid. I’m not making friends. He’s just … a guy. Seems all right. Works at the pizza place. Someone to hang out with.”
“Well, you two have fun,” Ma Egan said, settling back in her chair with her book, as John bounded down the back steps to the truck he’d managed to wrangle out of his dad’s possession for the night.
John stopped suddenly and turned around. “What? No curfew? No rules? No third degree? Do you want to know all about his family tree?” he asked, smiling at his mother.
“Just have fun.”
—
John pulled the truck up in front of Rush Hour Pizza just after nine o’clock, and could see Gale in the dimly lit restaurant, sweeping under the tables and chairs. He sat in his dad’s idling truck for a few minutes, before cutting the engine and getting out. John stood in front of the window, before eventually knocking on it to get Gale’s attention.
Gale glanced up quickly, startled, and then rolled his eyes when he saw it was John. He held up a finger to indicate that he’d be another minute and then returned to sweeping. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, John kicked at the ground, the stones nearby, until Gale emerged a few moments later, shrugging on a jean jacket and then turning to lock up.
“So, what kind of party are you dragging me to?” John asked, cocking his head toward the truck and making his way toward it.
Gale followed, his brow furrowed. “What? Party? There’s no party.”
John stilled, looking at Gale over the cab of the truck. “You said there was a party.”
“I didn’t -” Gale paused and then laughed, shaking his head. “I said there was a real barn burner happening tonight. I was being sarcastic. I thought - you didn’t realize I was making a joke?”
John flushed with embarrassment, opening the driver side door and getting into the truck. Gale stood outside for a moment, still laughing, before getting in through the passenger side. He tried not to look too long at John, who looked absolutely deflated. It just made him laugh more. “No party tonight, man. Sorry. Sometimes there are parties. But not usually on a Tuesday night.”
“Well if there’s no party, what the hell is there to do?” John asked, finally looking over at Gale.
Gale regarded John for a moment. “Not much of anything, man. That’s why I was kinda shocked when you asked if you could pick me up after work.”
“And yet you agreed to it,” John said, one hand on the steering wheel, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, like I said … there’s nothing to do.”
—
John parked in one of the many available spaces outside of the bowling alley, which looked like it might be older than his dad, and looked over at Gale. “Bowling? Really? This is what you had in mind?”
Gale shrugged and looked over at John. Pieces of his long blonde hair fell over his face, obscuring his eyes as he unbuckled his seatbelt and wriggled out of it. “It’s the only thing that’s open this late without going over to the next town. Do you want a chilli dog, or not?”
John did want a chilli dog. He unbuckled his seat belt as well and got out of the truck, locking it behind him as Gale began to walk toward the entrance of the bowling alley. John followed dutifully behind him, expecting despite the lack of cars outside that perhaps inside was busy, people getting dropped off or car pooling.
Instead John was greeted to a mostly empty bowling alley, a couple that looked like they might be around their age, the lone other patrons. John’s shoulders sank and he let out a sigh, eyes locating Gale, who was already at the counter getting them a lane.
“John! What size shoe are you?” he called out.
“Ten and a half,” John replied, closing the space between them and joining Gale at the counter.
Gale grabbed the shoes and shoved John’s into his chest, making his way down to one of the lanes. “You’re real sore about there not being some big party tonight, aren’t ya?” he asked, taking off his jacket and tossing it down into one of the chairs. He sat down and placed the score sheet on the table, writing their names down, smirking over at John.
“Had high expectations for the evening,” John replied, laughing a little as he toed his shoes off. He sat down in the chair next to Gale, shoving the bowling shoes onto his feet. “Not that you don’t meet them, I just - thought there would be a party. With girls.”
Gale laughed as the person working at the front counter turned on the lights for their lane. “I promise there are parties, John Boy. Just not tonight. My company and bowling will have to do if you want to get out of the house.”
As John laced his shoes he looked over at Gale, who was as bent over and taking his own shoes off, tucking pieces of his blonde hair behind his ears so they would stay out of his face. John didn’t know why, but he just kept looking. Staring. Gale must’ve eventually felt John’s eyes burning a hole into his face and looked up, almost startled at first and then making a face at him, winking (or attempting to) and sticking out his tongue.
“Rude to stare,” Gale said, sitting up.
Huffing a small laugh and shaking his head, John was embarrassed to be caught staring at the other boy. He didn’t know why - why he stared or why he was embarrassed. He stood up and moved toward the lane, picking up a ball along the way. “You’re the prettiest thing in here, Gale,” he teased as he walked backward.
John turned toward the lane and the pins too quickly, otherwise he would’ve caught Gale’s slow and wide eyed blink.
—
They bowled for a few rounds, and Gale did in fact treat John to a chilli dog and a coke, which he was extremely appreciative of. Eventually the couple that was also there had left, leaving them the only two patrons in the alley. The staff around them began cleaning up, and John asked if they should leave. Gale had waved a dismissive hand, telling him that it was hours before closing, but no one else was likely to come in.
John still felt strange about people cleaning up around him.
Back at the truck after they took their leave after a few more rounds of bowling, John unlocked the passenger side door for Gale before moving a round to his side. Gale had already hopped in the cab before John opened the driver side door, and watched John as he climbed inside.
“I should get home,” Gale said, rubbing his hands on his thighs. “Gotta be up at a somewhat decent hour tomorrow to open up the pizza place.”
“Right,” John said, nodding as he started the truck. He couldn’t imagine what else they’d get up to that night anyway, everything else was closed and there was quite literally nothing for them to do. “Just give me the directions and I’ll drop you off.”
Gale looked at him, blinking slowly and then clearing his throat. “It’s not far from here,” he said, looking out the front window. “I could just walk.”
“What,” John said, clutching at the steering wheel and leaning over it a little. “Don’t be stupid, this town isn’t any bigger than my thumbnail. I can drive you home, Gale.”
Gale nodded slowly, looking out the passenger window. “Right. Okay. It’s just … I don’t live in town.”
“Well, where do you live?” John asked.
“Outside of town,” Gale replied.
“Okay,” John said after a moment. “I can still - it’s not that far, Gale. I don’t mind.”
Gale seemed to tense up slightly, though he finally let out an exhale and relaxed his shoulders. “All right.”
Furrowing his brow, John put the truck and drive and then shook his head. “Looney,” he muttered good naturedly.
Gale lived not that far outside of town, in one of the houses that dotted an old dirt road that could best be described as being in the middle of nowhere. Not quite in the cottage town, not quite in the bigger town where the new mall was. It was certainly not within walking distance of the bowling alley, in the sense that it would’ve likely taken more than an hour for Gale to get there. And there were no streetlights along the old road. Knowing that, John didn’t plan on ever letting Gale walk home if they saw one another again.
“This is me,” Gale said, pointing to the right.
John didn’t see anything, but turned into a smaller dirt road lined with trees. He drove slowly, unfamiliar with the terrain and not able to see too far ahead of him with just the headlights. Past the small woodland lay a small white house that looked as if it had been abandoned years ago. John looked around for another house, and then glanced over at Gale.
“Still me,” Gale said, giving John a thin smile. “You can park here.”
John stopped the truck, and looked from Gale to the house. There were no lights on save for the outside one above the porch, and he had expected to see Gale’s father’s car or truck or something, but it wasn’t there.
“Your dad’s not home?” John asked, looking over at Gale curiously as he opened the passenger door.
Gale shrugged. “Probably out. Dad stays out late sometimes. Goes to the bars.” John nodded, watching as Gale got out of the truck. He held onto the passenger door, still smiling just a little at John. “Thanks for the lift. And for bowling. It was fun.”
“Yeah,” John said cautiously, fingers flexing against the steering wheel. “Don’t mention it.” An uneasy silence passed between them, and John looked back up at the house. “I’ll come by the pizza place sometime tomorrow if that’s okay? I mean, I know I don’t need to ask, it’s a fuckin’ restaurant, but -”
“For sure,” Gale interrupted with a smile, nodding his head. “I’ll make sure the Galaga cabinet is free this time.”
He slammed the truck door closed and made his way up to the house. John’s parents had always taught him to wait when dropping people off, making sure that they got into the house okay. It was just polite. But something beyond that compelled him to watch Gale, to make sure he got inside. Sure enough, Gale unlocked the door and then turned, lifting a hand to wave at John.
John waved back, but stayed there a little while longer, until he saw a light finally come on in the home.
—
When he arrived back at the cottage, John arrived quietly. Or rather, as quietly as one could in the dead of night when your limbs are long and awkward and everything in the space that you’re occupying feels like it was meant for literally everyone else but you. John miscalculated the location of the solitary step that went from the hallway to the kitchen and stumbled, cursing under his breath. Elsewhere in the cottage he heard a giggle and rolled his eyes.
“Just get up, Billie. I can hear you,” John whispered harshly.
He opened the fridge door and began rummaging for ingredients to make a sandwich, while Billie shuffled out of the bedroom that they used to share, rubbing at her eyes and idly playing with the pigtails she put her hair in while she slept. “You’re home late,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table. John propped up the fridge door so he could get some light to see what he was making, and worked quickly so that the old motor didn’t kick into overdrive, waking up their dad. “How was your date?” Billie teased in a sing-song voice.
John rolled his eyes, shoving everything back into the fridge, not at all where it was “meant” to go and quickly closed the door. The kitchen became bathed in the blue hue of the moonlight bouncing off of the water from the lake. “It wasn’t a date,” he said, sitting down at the table with Billie. “I went out with another guy.”
Billie giggled, ducking her head. “Guys can go on dates with other guys.”
John groaned around a mouthful of turkey sandwich. “It wasn’t - oh my god, Billie,” he said as she kept giggling. “It was just a guy I met earlier today. I’ve been bored to tears. Needed someone to hang out with.”
“Uh huh,” Billie said, kicking at John’s long legs under the table. “What did you two do on your boy date?”
Ignoring her, knowing acknowledging her foolishness would just further egg her on, John replied, “We went bowling. Not a lot to do around here on a random Tuesday night.”
“Sounds like a date.”
“I’m going to push you down into the well.”
Billie cackled loudly, only to clap her hand over her mouth to stifle herself. “So, who’s your new boyfriend?”
“If I tell you you’ll find him and be annoying,” John replied, mouth full. He was intentionally disgusting around his sister in hopes that when she was annoying him that he could gross her out to the point that she would leave him alone. “He lives just outside of town, works in town, bored as hell just like me.”
“Yeah,” Billie murmured in a way that projected her understanding of how boring it could be. “You should invite him out shopping with Lucia and I.”
“He’s too old for you, Billie,” John said, rolling his eyes. “And besides, I wouldn’t do that to him. He seems like a nice guy. And you’re a slug.”
“I am not a slug!”
“Hush,” John said, kicking his sister under the table. He smiled at her, before shoving the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and chewing loudly. “Go to bed. I’ve got to set up my bedroom for the night.”
Billie stood up, twirling a pigtail around her finger. “Dad’s planning on getting up early tomorrow to go fishing with Lucia’s dad. He’ll be stomping around bright and early. Just a heads up.”
John Sr. suffered from being the loudest human being alive when it came to waking up in the morning. John had become accustomed to it as he got older, though he was very much aware of what the future held for him when he eventually had a wife and kids and he felt sorry for them. That sort of thing had to be hereditary.
“Noted. G’night, Bill.”
“G’night, John John.”
—
“Hey, how do you get here on the days that you work?”
John, true to his word, rolled up on his bike to Rush Hour Pizza before they opened, though he hadn’t meat to. He’d simply been awake because his dad had woken him up just as he suspected he would, and he’d run out of things to do. Gale teased him about being clingy, and John had huffed and turned his head, hoping that he could attribute the flush on his face to the already sweltering day outside. The front of the shop was cool, there was an ancient air conditioner in the window that sounded louder than a fighter jet, and John had taken up residence right beside it. Gale had his hair up and John teased him about looking too much like a girl from behind again.
“You keep saying that and I’m going to think you have nefarious intentions,” Gale had said, flicking a rolled up piece of tinfoil he found on the floor toward John. John had batted it away with ease, reminding Gale that when he wasn’t bored to tears in a town with no name that he played baseball.
“What do you mean?” Gale asked, looking over his shoulder to John as he got up.
John raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean what do I mean? How do you get here on the days that you work? I dropped you off at home last night. You didn’t ask me to come back here to drop you off at your car, pick up your bike or anything, I just took you right home.”
There’s a pinched sort of look on Gale’s face before he turns away again to head toward the back of the shop, check on the pizzas that are cooking. “My dad drops me off. Or I walk.”
“You walk?”
“Yeah. It’s no big deal.”
It wasn’t. Not really. John was accustomed to long walks, sometimes without planning to, him and his buddies just wandering around for hours and then realising they’d walked almost all over Manitowoc. “I mean, I guess not,” John muttered. “It’s just … so much shorter by car. Or bike.”
Gale chuckled, moving behind the counter and putting his apron on. He’d be officially opening up the restaurant soon. “Yeah,” he said again, tying the apron behind his back. “You’re a very smart man, John.”
“Shut up,” John said, chuckling. There was a silence between them for a moment, until John cleared his throat and broke it. “Does your dad drive you every day?”
“No,” Gale replied tersely, grabbing the pizza peel to begin taking pizzas out. “John, you’re making a big deal out of nothing. My dad drives me here and drops me off, picks me up. And when he doesn’t or can’t, I walk. It’s fine.”
John’s mind went to how dark the road was when he dropped Gale off the night before, how easy it would be for a car to miss a turn, someone behind the wheel not paying attention, and then -
“I wake up pretty early. Cottage is small. Dad makes a lot of noise,” John said idly, as if not speaking to Gale at all. “On the days that your dad can’t drive you, I could come and pick you up? Hell, I’ll give you Billie’s bike if you want. There’s pink tassels on it though.”
John watched Gale’s shoulders shake as chuckled, pulling pizzas out of the oven. “I’m not stealing your sister’s bike, man.”
“No, of course you’re not. I am.”
Gale laughed again, and John felt a bit more at ease after perhaps annoying Gale a little. He didn’t know how to not annoy people. It was part of his charm back home, and evidently in cottage country as well. “Anyway, as I was saying, I could come and pick you up.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that, John.”
“You’re not. I’m offering,” John said, still watching Gale intently. Gale was acting like this conversation wasn’t bothering him, but John could see that same pinched look he had seen before. “C’mon, Gale. Friends help each other out. It’s nothing.”
Gale paused, turning to look back around. “Are we friends, John?”
“I’d like to think so.”
Gale looked at him for a moment before nodding and turning back to work. “Fine. But I’ll have to call you from the gas station about ten minutes from my house. Our phone’s not working at the moment. Although by that point I’m already ten minutes into the walk, so -”
“Fuck’s sake, Gale. Just let me pick you up.”
“Fine. But if you don’t stop badgering me about it, I’m gonna open the doors and let Billy and Chad play Galaga before you can get your hands on it.”
John’s attention turned toward the front door, where the two boys were looking inside. He quickly stood up and stuck his tongue out at them, strutting over to the arcade cabinet in full view of them.
—
John eventually left the pizza place, knowing that he couldn’t truly spend the entire day there. Gale would likely rope him into doing work if he did, and John had no interest in learning how to make pizzas or sweeping the floor. Gale did send him home with a pizza that he had slightly burned, and asked if John would be coming by later.
“Why?” John asked with a grin, holding the pizza box. “You need a lift home?”
Gale punched him in the arm. “Yeah, dillhole. That cool?”
“I’ll think about it,” John said coyly, before slipping out the front door.
A slice of pepperoni meant for his face hit the door instead as it closed behind him.
No one was home when John returned to the cottage, but he threw the pizza on the kitchen table for whoever might inevitably come in, grabbed a slice for himself and one of his books before heading out the back door. He found Ma sitting down on a blanket by where they usually had their bonfires, sunning herself and working on a cross stitch. John moved quietly until he was right behind her, then leaned over and said “I hope you’re wearing sunscreen,” though the majority of the sentence was drowned out by her scream.
“John Clarence Egan!” Ma scolded, grabbing a raspberry from a bowl and tossing it at him. He was cackling with laughter. “Don’t scare your Ma like that!” He continued laughing, even as she shook her head and sighed at him, trying to act cross despite her smile. John joined her on the blanket, taking a too large bite of pizza. “Where’d you find pizza, honey?”
“My new friend works at the pizza place. Remember?” John replied, talking with his mouth full.
Ma smiled, not lifting her gaze to look at her son, continuing with her stitching. “I’m glad you’ve made another friend for the summer, Johnny,” she said. “What’s his name?”
“Gale,” John replied, laying down on the blanket and opening his book. “He’s from Wyoming.”
“Is that the most interesting thing about him that you know?” Ma asked, smiling at her son.
John shrugged, pretending to read. “I dunno. We just started hanging out.” He paused. “You’d like him. He’s polite.”
Ma laughed. “There’s more to getting in my good graces than being polite.”
John let out a small non-committal hum, flipping through the pages in his book. Ma set her cross stitching down and idly ran her fingers through her son’s curls, like she used to when he was a boy. He’d always enjoy the scrape of her long, manicured nails against his scalp. John closed his eyes and listened to the song of the cicadas in the trees nearby.
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: the last place that john egan wants to be the summer before he graduates high school is the egan family cottage, a place where time and everyone else seems to have forgotten. having been intent on finding a summer job, spending time with his friends, going to parties, and making out with pretty girls, john is irked that the egan family matriarch has other ideas and wants the family to spend "one last" summer together.
john's sour mood shifts just a little when he meets local, but also not-so-local, gale cleven, a boy his age who works at the small town's one pizza joint. through teenage angst and a desire to break free of the awkward position of not being children anymore but not yet men, the two form a bond that makes their summer a little more bearable. a bond that comes to shock the both of them.
but what happens when more than the summer comes to an end?
𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: teen, though later chapters might have a slightly higher rating.
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 4.2k
𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: YEAH FIRST MASTERS OF THE AIR FIC. thank you to everyone who reblogged the mood board and expressed interest in the story. special thanks to @wildbornsiren for being my ride or die and @swifty-fox for letting me share snippets and bouncing ideas off of you.
likes / comments / reblogs are very much appreciated! thank you for reading! 💚
» mood board.
» read on ao3.
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈.
Summer 1986
Somewhere in Wisconsin
“Johnny!”
Evidently, John Egan had ignored the shouts from his mother to come inside for the last time. Her voice turned into something shrill that he could hear even down by the lake, where he could normally escape all manner of ruckus that came from the cottage. It wasn’t that noisy, he supposed. But it was difficult to get a moment of peace and quiet when his whole family - his ma and dad, his sister, and himself - were all crammed into the small two bedroom space.
When they were kids, John and his sister, Billie, would bunk together in one room, at first sharing the one bed, John then eventually sleeping on the floor when he “got too long,” as his dad put it. But when one is suddenly seventeen, and the other is fourteen, bunking together isn’t on the table anymore, no matter what Ma said. John would just as soon take the couch, which he was too long to fit on comfortably anymore, in the living room, or grab a tent and camp out under the stars if the weather was nice enough.
“Johnny Egan!”
The last name had been included, it was getting serious.
John pushed himself up with a soft grunt, hands instinctively wiping grass and dirt from the ass of his shorts. He reached over to pick up the battered copy of ‘Salem’s Lot and the empty bottle of Coke that he’d brought down to the edge of the lake with him, cramming the book in his back pocket, and holding the empty bottle between his long fingers.
He didn’t know what all the fuss was about, having dinner at the same time every night. It was summer, no one else seemed to be on a set schedule. Kids, teens, and adults ran wild in cottage country. At least that had been the way. Once upon a time, he and Billie had been allowed to miss dinners and stay out past their bedtimes. Yet somehow, as they got older, Ma and Dad were trying to tighten the reins. Ma had tearfully mentioned that it might be the last time they all got down to the lake together for the summer, as if one of them were fuckin’ dying or something.
John tramped through the brush and tall grass to get to the path that would lead him back to the small cluster of cottages on the the top of the hill. There had been four that had always been there, as long as he could remember, situated around the lake. They went back generations, passed down through handshakes and wills, little more than a handful of rooms for families to sleep, eat, and unwind after a day in the sun.
But over the past few years things further up the road were beginning to be developed, real proper like, and it was only a matter of time before it reached the older cottages down by the lake. John had ridden his bike past them shortly after they’d arrived a week ago; they looked almost as nice as the house that they lived in ten months out of the year back in Manitowoc. John had heard the stories about how the Egan Family Cottage had come to be, put together by his grandfather and a few friends over the course of the summer in 1945, a product of coming home from the war, too much time on their hands, and a lot of packs of cigarettes and beer.
“Jo -”
“I’m comin’ Ma!”
When he was a kid it seemed like a much greater distance between the cottage and the lake, and now he realized that they were within spitting distance of one another. He’d taken up less space then.
John crested over the small hill at the top of the path, the cottages in full or partial view now. Theirs was on the far right, and despite its location amongst the small cluster, had been the center of his universe, and the universe of all the other kids, summer friends, that spent summers there, for as long as he could remember. But the Miller kids were both off to college the last couple of years, and Amos Cook had passed away early that spring, and his widow couldn’t bear to come down and bring their grandkids with her.
Suddenly, at seventeen years of age, John felt too young and too old all at once.
—
“Lucia’s dad said he would drive us to the mall the next town over tonight. If that’s okay? Ma? It closes at eight.”
John pushed the remnants of dinner around his plate with the prongs of his fork, desperately wanting to be set free from the small dinner table shoved into a corner of an equally small kitchen, to go and find somewhere to finish his book. He only had a couple of chapters left before he was finished, and he really wanted an excuse to take his bike (or the truck if Dad was in a good mood) into town the next day, go to the library, maybe spend some time at the pizza place that had Galaga and Time Pilot arcade cabinets, see a pretty girl. Any girl, really. He was beginning to think his summer would’ve been better spent in Manitowoc. At least then maybe he stood a chance of feeling up something pretty in the back seat at the drive-in.
“Who’s Lucia?” John Egan the Elder asked, reaching over and opening the fridge door. The perks of the small kitchen and its small dinner table meant that the fridge was often within reach. Egan Senior pulled out a beer and held it up, looking at John with raised eyebrows. John nodded, and his dad pulled another one out. He popped the caps off of both and then handed one to his son.
“A new friend,” Billie replied after a sip of water. “Her parents have one of the cottages up the road. I met her today. She’s really nice. Ma, you’d like her.”
“Oh, Billie. Why would you want to go to the mall on a night like this?” Ma Egan asked, dabbing her lips with a napkin.
Dinner had been steaks and vegetables that Dad had cooked on the barbeque. It dawned on John that in the summer that his dad did most of the cooking on the grill, which meant Ma got a break from cooking. Perhaps that was why she had been so eager to come down to the cottage every year.
“Oh let her go, Ma,” John Sr. said, then taking a sip from his bottle of beer. “She’s met a new friend and wants to go to the mall. Ain’t no danger in it. So long as she doesn’t spend her entire allowance.”
John swore his Ma still believed that they were children who needed coddling and protection from the world. He had his own feelings about his sister getting older - for one thing, she was infinitely more annoying than he had ever remembered her being - but Billie didn’t need Ma looming over her shoulder at all times.
“Well, who will John spend time with if she’s gone?” Ma asked John Sr., as if neither Billie or John will be present.
“He’s seventeen, he doesn’t want to spend summer nights with his kid sister.” Again, they may as well have not been there. “Am I right, John?”
John inhaled, waiting for a moment of quiet in which he could reply in, before Ma was filling the void. “Oh, all right. Is Lucia’s dad going to pick you up from the mall?”
Billie brightened. “Yes. Eight o’clock on the dot, he said.”
“Then I suppose it’s all right. But I want you home no later than eight thirty.”
“May I be excused?” John asked, looking between his parents.
“Of course,” Ma replied, before immediately turning back to Billie to go over the five new rules she’d just concocted for going to the mall with Lucia.
John cleared his plate, grabbed his beer, his book from off the table by the back door, and made his way back down to his spot at the lake. He still had a couple of hours of daylight left, and even after he finished his book (he was a fast reader) there would be plenty of time for him to just lay by the lake, sipping the remnants of his beer, and enjoying the sounds of the crickets and the lake.
—
Back in Manitowoc, the library had a couple of girls John’s age who worked there part time. While he did enjoy going there to check out something new, he also enjoyed leaning over the counter, smiling with all of his teeth, and asking what their favourite books were. He also enjoyed watching them duck their heads and giggle, and on occasion following them to the very back stacks where their favourite books were not at all located and putting his hands under their skirts while they tried to stifle their moans against his shoulder.
In the town library down at the cottage it was small enough to be staffed by one woman, and that woman was old enough to be his grandmother. John wasn’t opposed necessarily … she just wasn’t his type.
His solitary errand completed for the day (he picked a couple more Stephen King books), John glanced at his watch. It was only ten in the morning.
Letting out a huff, he leaned against the brick exterior of the library and looked up and down the one street the town possessed. So many shops weren’t even opened yet, their proprietors moving as lazily as the out of towners who took over in the summer. John didn’t know much about business or economics (despite Dad’s best efforts), but thought that opening earlier would be more profitable.
Or maybe it wouldn’t. He was just bored out of his skull.
They had six more weeks there.
Books placed in the milk crate at the back, John mounted his bike and began lazily cycling down the street back toward the direction of the cottage, passing by the pizza place. It was open, and John spotted a couple of kids Billie’s age playing Galaga. It felt far too early for a slice, but John wasn’t quite ready to go back to the cottage and get through another book in a day.
Parking his bike outside, John then opened the door to Rush Hour Pizza. What passed for rush hour in this place he would very much like to see. The boys were playing Galaga, one shouting very unhelpful directions at the other, but aside from that the shop was empty, save for the thin blond working behind the counter, her back turned to the entrance. He leaned over the counter, one hand pressed against the linoleum and set his voice to purr.
“Hey pretty thing.”
The blond turned around, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline, blue eyes wide.
Fuck.
“Um.”
“Yeah,” the boy around John’s age supplied, tucking a piece of his long blond hair behind his ear. “My dad’s been saying I should get a haircut.”
He was slender, but not so slender that John should’ve been mistaking him for a girl. John was scarlett with shame, but tried not to let it show, instead just clearing his throat and looking down at the counter for a moment to get his bearings.
“What can I get for ya?” the boy asked.
“Uh,” John replied, finally glancing up. Okay, so he may have been a boy but he was still extremely pretty in a masculine sense. Was that a thing that men were? John had never thought a boy was pretty before. He’d looked at men with curiosity, but never -
“You okay, man?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” John replied. “Can I, uh, get a slice?”
“This early?”
John looked at the boy across the counter incredulously. “It’s … a pizza place. You sell pizza. You’re open.”
“Yeah, but … it’s ten in the morning.”
“Then what …” John trailed off, gesturing to the boys playing Galaga.
The blond boy leaned over the counter, looking at the two younger boys shoving quarters into the arcade cabinet, and then looking back at John. “They’re playing Galaga.”
“I see that they’re playing Galaga. But isn’t this the sort of place where you, I dunno, have to buy something in order to use … the facilities?”
The boy chuckled and John kind of hated him. He stole a glance at the nametag pinned to the boy’s apron - GALE - and then lifted his gaze to his face once more.
“When my dad is here, probably. But I dunno, it’s summer and this place is boring. I don’t care. If they wanna feed quarters into the machines they can go for it. We get their money regardless. At least, that’s what my dad would say. They bought some Cokes about an hour ago,” Gale said. “Pizza’s not even ready yet.”
John blinked. “Then why are you open?”
“Galaga,” Gale replied, pointing at the boys and the arcade cabinet once more. “I was here making the pizzas anyway.”
“So when you asked what you could get me, it was limited to beverages,” John said, letting out a sigh.
“There’s a menu,” Gale said, pointing to the large board above his head. “I can make you a sandwich. Or a sub.”
For the first time, John picks up on Gale’s accent, and cocks his head. “Not from around here, are you?”
“No sir,” Gale replied, leaning against the counter. “Born in South Dakota, grew up in Wyoming.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?” John asked. Gale opened his mouth to speak and John interrupted him. “If you say ‘Galaga’ one more time -”
Gale laughed, something big and bright, showing all of his perfect fuckin’ teeth. It stretched up to the corners of his eyes and made his nose scrunch up, and John’s face felt strangely warm again. “Change of scenery. Dad got tired of Wyoming.” He tilted his head at John. “You’re not from here either.”
“Well, I’m from Manitowoc. My family summers here.”
“Summers. Fancy,” Gale said a little teasingly, straightening back up. It was far from fancy, but John didn’t correct him. “Can I make you a sandwich or what?”
John reached into his pockets and pulled out his wallet, rifling through his cash. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Cold cut sub sounds great. Not gonna get on my ass about it being too early for lunch?”
“I would never,” Gale replied with a slow smile.
—
“You were gone long,” Ma said the moment that John walked in through the back door of the cottage, a stack of books under his arm.
John rolled his eyes and placed the books down on one of the side tables next to the couch, which had been serving at his nightstand. “Ma, please.”
“Well, I’m just sayin’ is all,” Ma Egan said defensively, looking up from washing dishes in the kitchen. “Said you were going to the library. Figured you’d be there and back in half an hour or so.”
With an exasperated sigh, John flopped down onto the couch. He wasn’t certain if he could bear even just another day of his mother being overbearing. “Ma, we’re on vacation. I’m almost an adult -” Ma snorted, and John ignored her. “- can you stop hasslin’ me about being a bit longer in town? It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.”
“Now John Egan, I’ve had just about enough of your complaining,” Ma said with a sigh, tossing her washcloth into the sink.
John sat up a little straighter, hands stretched out in front of him, eyebrows raised in confusion. “I haven’t complained once since we got here.”
“Oh yes you have,” Ma Egan said. “Maybe not in so many words, but you’ve been throwing yourself around like a rag doll since you set foot inside this place. Mopin’ about, spendin’ all of your time down at the lake.”
“There’s nothing for me to do here,” John said, and he sounded much whinier than he had meant to. Definitely not an adult.
“Like hell there ain’t,” Ma Egan said, hands on her hips. “Your sister has been makin’ friends up the road, and don’t tell her I ever said it, but you’re far more personable than she is.”
“Ma,” John began, his voice firm and level. “Billie is a kid. There are other kids around. I, your son who is a completely different person, am not a kid. There’s no one my age around here. They’re probably all working jobs. Which is what I wanted to do this summer back home, but you and dad insisted that we all come here. So forgive me for feeling a little bit put out that I’m spending my summer vacation with nothing to do, when I wanted to get a job, make some money for school, and spend time with my friends.”
“And get up to no good,” Ma Egan said quickly.
“Ma -”
“Those boys you pal around with aren’t exactly model citizens.”
“Neither am I,” John muttered, really wishing he had thought to buy a pack of cigarettes while he was in town. He hadn’t thought he would need to take the edge off there, but it was becoming apparent that he would.
“Not if you keep aligning yourself with that lot,” Ma Egan said, stepping into the small living room, cluttered with John’s belongings. “Look, the reason why your father and I insisted that we all come here this summer is that it’ll probably be the last time we all get the chance to.”
“Ain’t no one dyin’, Ma!”
Sighing, Ma sat down next to John on the couch. “John, it ain’t about that. You and your sister are getting older, you’re not going to want to come down here anymore with the whole family. Hell, you already didn’t want to. But next summer you’ll be off to college, or getting a job somewhere, and you won’t be able to make it down. And your father and I aren’t gettin’ any younger.” She paused and reached over, taking one of John’s hands. “Our lives are all going to change one way or another in the coming years, and ain’t nothin’ guaranteed. But we could have this one last time. Some time together. I’m sorry that we dragged you here. But I ain’t sorry that you’re here. You understand me?”
John glanced over at his mother, letting out a small sigh of his own. He loved his family, he did. But he was filled with that sort of unbridled rage that all teenagers feel when they’re on the cusp of adulthood. Even if he couldn’t identify it, quantify it, it was there. He did an excellent job of keeping it to himself for the most part, unless his mother drew it out of him, like she was doing then and there.
He didn’t quite understand her insistence that they all be together at the cottage when they could’ve been together back home. But, agreeing with her in the past had sometimes been a better option than arguing with her, and John couldn’t bear to break her heart with his own teenage angst anymore.
“Yeah, Ma. I understand.”
—
That afternoon, John had found his father, who was working on a truck for one of the newer neighbours up the road. Turns out it had been Billie’s new friend’s father. Billie and Lucia were inside, enjoying some air conditioning and listening to New Kids on the Block, while their two dads stood over the open front hood of the blue Dodge Ram, each holding a beer in their hand. John the Younger managed to lend a hand, which seemed to please his father, who really wanted his son to one day take up the mantle of the family business back home.
John was still undecided if he wanted to be a mechanic or not. In fact, he was still undecided on what he wanted to be at all.
As a thank you, Lucia’s dad suggested they get pizza. John was about to take his leave when Lucia insisted that he stay. John didn’t miss the way that Lucia looked at him, and couldn’t find it in himself to break the girl’s heart, so he agreed. Billie looked equal parts shocked and disgusted, and he later heard her say, “My brother? Seriously? Ew.”
“He’s got a moustache, Billie.”
“Not a good one.”
John was glad he was out of sight, if not out of earshot, rubbing at the hair above his lip absentmindedly. The moustache was a work in progress. He thought it looked just fine. And Deborah Jensen back home in Manitowoc had seemed to be quite fond of it as well.
Lucia’s dad gave him the keys to the newly fixed truck to go pick up the pizzas, and John Sr. reminded him to be on his best behaviour with a truck that wasn’t theirs. John fought the urge to roll his eyes, wanting to be a good guest, and after taking his time to ensure that the mirrors were properly adjusted, hands at ten and two (he knew his dad was watching), John drove ten under the speed limit until he was out of sight.
—
John pulled up to Rush Hour Pizza with a groan, not really in the mood for Gale. He didn’t know why, they’d gotten on well enough that morning. Gale was clearly bored to tears waiting for the pizzas to come out of the oven, so he’d chatted with John from across the restaurant while he ate his sub (it had been really fuckin’ good).
When the bell above the door chimed, Gale popped up seemingly out of nowhere, looking a little bewildered to see John again. “Couldn’t get enough of me?” he asked.
“Very funny,” John said, looking around. The arcade cabinets were abandoned. He supposed it was dinner time, all the neighbourhood kids were probably at home. “I’m just here to pick up a couple of pizzas. My dad’s friend ordered them.”
“Oh yeah. Of course,” Gale said, hands braced against the counter. He paused. “What’s the name?”
John blinked at Gale. “I don’t fuckin’ know.”
“You don’t know your dad’s friend’s name?”
“... Lucia’s Dad?”
Gale chuckled, shaking his head. “Can’t say I recall taking that order, man.”
John sighed, shoulders slumping. “Okay. Well. Are there any orders here?”
“Yeah, a few.” A beat of silence passed between them. “Do you know what he ordered?”
“Pizzas.”
Gale smiled, cocking an eyebrow and folding his arms across his chest. “How in the hell do y’all get by in Manitowoc?”
“I’m beginning to wonder that myself.”
Still smiling, Gale pulled some receipts from a small pile to his right. “Here. We’ll go through them both together. You tell me if any of the names or orders ring any bells.”
“Doesn’t this violate pizza-client privilege or something?” John asked, leaning over the counter slightly to look at the order slips with Gale.
“That’s not a thing.”
Apparently, all twelve people in town had ordered pizzas for pick up that evening. As Gale rattled off names and orders, John realized that the pizza boy didn’t even know his name. It seemed very unfair that he knew Gale’s.
“I’m John,” he said, interrupting Gale mid-sentence.
Gale glanced up at John, blinking slowly. “Well, all right. Hello John. I’m Gale.”
“I know. You have a nametag.”
Gale glanced down at his chest and smiled. “So I do. Forgot I had that on. Okay, where were we? Carlos -”
“That’s it! What’s his last name?” John interrupted excitedly.
“I was gonna get to that, y’know,” Gale said, looking up at John and smiling. “Navarro.”
“That’s the one!” John said, taking the slip from Gale and looking at the order. “One pepperoni, one meat lovers, and one vegetarian.”
“Coming right up,” Gale said, heading toward the back as John pulled cash out of his wallet.
While John waited for Gale to come back with the pizzas, he craned his neck to look into the kitchen. “Do you work here alone?” he called out.
He heard Gale laugh. “Why? Comin’ back to kill me tomorrow night?” he replied, still hidden in the back.
“Not my style,” John replied. “Just … you’re the only pizza place in town it seems, and it’s just you here. Seems like a lot of work.”
Gale returns to the counter with three boxes of pizzas, setting them down and then taking the cash from John. “I like to keep busy. My dad comes in during the rushes, but once the pizzas are actually in the oven the rest is just … transactions. Making sandwiches and stuff like that.”
“Right,” John said, watching Gale as he rang up his order and handed John back the change. John tossed some into the tip jar. He picked up the pizzas and nodded a thanks to Gale, who nodded one back and tucked a piece of his hair behind his ear. John was halfway to the door, before he stopped and turned around. “Gale, what the fuck do people like you and me do around here for fun?”
This photo has been on my mind and well...this happened. This hasn’t been beta’ed so please excuse any major grammas issues.
Pairing: Rhett Abbott x F!Reader
Word Count: 250ish
Warnings: Explicit, 18+ only. Breathplay, unprotected PIV, and dirty talk.
You reach down to caress Rhett's thick neck absently while riding him, thighs squeezing his slender waist. You’re too focused on just how good he feels inside you to notice his reaction. The second time your hands fall to his throat you’re staring down at him and you catch his subtle response. His long lashes flutter and a breathy grunt passes his clenched lips. When you do it again, applying the tiniest bit of pressure, he bucks into you hard, fingers digging into your fleshy hips.
“Fuck, come on, girl,” Rhett growls, eyes burning into yours. “Do it.”
His pace slows, letting you get your bearings. Tentatively, you wrap your hands around his neck, feeling the way his Adam’s Apple bobs under your palm. You tighten your grip slowly, watching his face as you do. It’s harder than you expect to keep up the pressure, but once you’re squeezing him in earnest, he starts moving again until he’s rutting into you desperately, mouth parting soundlessly.
You roll your hips and the muscles in his neck strain. A moment later Rhett comes hard, his whole body locking up. He gives a few lazy thrusts before stilling, heart beating wildly under your hand. When you let go of his neck he groans, low and hoarse.
“Well that was something,” you tell him with a smile.
Rhett’s only response is to draw a hand down his face and swallow heavily. “Just as soon as I recover, I’m going to fuck the breath out of you,” he warns.
"I'm counting on it," you reply, kissing him deeply.
the last place that john egan wants to be the summer before he graduates high school is the egan family cottage, a place where time and everyone else seems to have forgotten. having been intent on finding a summer job, spending time with his friends, going to parties, and making out with pretty girls, john is irked that the egan family matriarch has other ideas and wants the family to spend "one last" summer together.
john's sour mood shifts just a little when he meets local, but also not-so-local, gale cleven, a boy his age who works at the small town's one pizza joint. through teenage angst and a desire to break free of the awkward position of not being children anymore but not yet men, the two form a bond that makes their summer a little more bearable. a bond that comes to shock the both of them.
but what happens when more than the summer comes to an end?
Slider is a restless sleeper. His roommate at the barracks kicks him out pretty regularly because they can't handle the tossing and turning anymore.
He's claimed one of the couches in the common area, it barely holds him, but it's comfortable enough to rest. Tonight though he ends up sprawled out on "his" couch in the common area, eyes glazed over staring at an infomercial, unable to sleep.
Goose, having woken up from a bad dream, wanders out, not wanting to disturb Mav; stands in the doorway watching Slider.
Slider shifts his position every few minutes, one leg tossed over the leg of the couch. He's bouncing it, fingers picking at an overstuffed pillow he's got clutched to his chest. Goose can feel the exhaustion radiating off of him.
Quietly, he steps into the room, turning the television off, casting the room into darkness. Slider's protest dies on his lips when Goose grabs the pillow tossing it aside. He stretches out on top of Slider, though it takes a few moments of adjusting and awkwardly placed elbows.
Eventually they settle, Goose's head on Slider's chest. He's humming an old lullaby, while Slider's hands ease up and down his back.
In the morning they can't look at each other without a flush rising on their face. Neither will admit it, but it's the best night's sleep they've ever had.
» equate - dick winters x lewis nixon ◊☆
↳ nixon thinks about an attic haguenau often. apparently winters does not.
» you should see me in the rain - dick winters x lewis nixon ◊☆
↳ upon returning to america, lewis watches the subtle changes in dick. He doesn’t like them.
summary: upon returning to america, lewis watches the subtle changes in dick. He doesn't like them.
warnings: descriptions of sex, discussions of war, repressed feelings, alcoholism.
word count: 1.7k
author's notes: another fic that i wrote ever a decade ago and have posted over on ao3. apparently i struggled giving these two something resembling a happy ending.
likes / comments / reblogs are very much appreciated! thank you for reading! ♥
For as long as he had known him, Dick had possessed a sort of grace that did not seem possible for anyone within the realm of reality. Lewis had originally noticed it while training at Toccoa, and was amazed that it continued on, even throughout the war and in combat; perhaps even more so amidst the firefights, the hails of bullets, the mortar shells, and the bloodshed. Having taken to stumbling drunkenly through Europe, as he did in life in so many more aspects than simply the act of putting one foot in front of the other, Lewis found himself amazed in the constant and the consistency of the grace that held its sway over Richard Winters.
It held on in dire moments of deafening noise where just one step to the right could perhaps end it all, and in the oddly quiet moments where war seemed that it just might be the furthest from his mind. Nixon recalled with stunning clarity instances when there was nothing beautiful, nothing poetic about the circumstances they had been thrust into. And yet, with a quiet elegance, there he was – unwavering and unrelenting. There were moments where he had been filthy, covered in dirt and the blood of men who he had known or not known at all. His eyes had been weary, yet bright, and what passed for a smile upon his lips was capable of lighting up the entirety of any room. A lot of the men looked up to him, admired him. Lewis was foolishly in love.
His fingers, nimble as his mannerisms, had gently coaxed Nixon out of his clothing one night in Austria, merely because he had gotten so blindingly drunk that he wasn’t capable of operating buttons. Lewis declared that he was fine and attempted to push Winters away, who told him in as serious a tone that he could manage that Lewis was pushing a coat rack and not him. Lewis allowed himself to be undressed, although he would have gladly burned his ODs then and not given a fuck for the rest of time. Dick stopped upon reaching Nixon’s undershirt and shorts, and Nixon told him not to. With grace and not a moment’s hesitation, Dick complied, and Lewis drunkenly pulled at Dick’s clothing until it wasn’t there anymore, attempting to kiss him properly but instead missing his lips by a few centimetres and kissing the corner of his mouth.
Skin on skin, warm and damp, indulging in the utterly delicious feeling that only came with his friend’s hips pressed nakedly against his own, Lewis gasped curses against Dick’s lips, while Dick whispered about sins and forgiveness. Nixon’s fingertips must have burned wherever they grazed Dick’s flesh, for the other man moaned as if he’d been injured every time he felt them. Dick seemed particularly fond of kissing, not at all minding the taste of alcohol and cigarettes that came with the territory when pressing one’s lips to Lewis’. Neither of them truly listened to the other, until they both lie on the uncomfortable twin bed, exhausted and completely spent. Dick said, “That can’t happen again.” Lewis replied with, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Lewis didn’t drink as much the following day.
Until the day that Nixon was sent home, he and Dick shared moments as they could get them, although it was never anything more than a fleeting glance or a momentary intertwining of fingers when no one was looking. Lewis returned to the States to inherit a broken home, divorce papers, and child support. When Dick’s services were finally no longer required in Europe, he returned to the States to inherit Lewis Nixon.
—
Nixon kept bottles around the house in various states – some were empty, had a shot or two left, while some were half full and half empty, or hadn’t even been opened yet. Dick tried to dispose of the empty ones as often as he could, but Lewis seemed to drink faster than he could keep up. He drank to keep the memories at bay, and leave them far away from his mind, back in places like Normandy, Eindhoven, and Landsberg where he had acquired them.
Despite earlier affirmations that what happened in Austria was not meant to happen again, and a bedroom which had become his own, Dick eventually found his way into Nixon’s bed after a month of lodging with him. The first few times it came in the middle of the night, like a child having awoken from a nightmare. Dick slipped under the covers of Lewis’ bed, didn’t ask if he could, simply did. Lewis would wrap an arm around him, pull him close, and Dick would finally fall asleep while listening to the persistent beating of Lewis’ heart. Then he stopped going to his own room, following Lewis up to bed instead when they eventually called it a night. On the fifth night of abandoning his bed for Lewis’, Dick let Lewis touch him, and he made him gasp and whimper as he had in Austria so many months previous.
With the exception of for grabbing a change of clothes, or keeping up appearances when the occasional guest (usually Lewis’ sister, Blanche) came over, Dick didn’t return to his bedroom.
—
It was in the way that he moved.
Grace found itself slowly removed from Dick’s existence, and Lewis struggled with the implications of that. He wondered if the fatigue of war, the weight that Dick had held upon his shoulders for so many years were finally picking at the already frayed edges. It was in the subtle way that he moved, in such a simple thing as walking. It was nowhere near the lumbering Lewis considered an appropriate way to get from Point A to Point B, but it was very much not the sort of way he’d become accustomed to Dick moving. His impenetrable grace was as much a part of him as his fiery red hair, which still remained as the grace slowly left.
All parts of Dick should remain intact, Lewis thought.
—
Dick lay in bed, Lewis beside him, fingertips gently tracing over scars that Dick never remembered how he obtained. His fingertips must not have burned, for Dick only sighed softly when Nixon’s touch grazed over raised, angry looking white and red marks embedded in his flesh. It had come with the territory, and Winters wasn’t certain if they’d ever go away, or if he would wear them as reminders until the day that he died. They hadn’t hurt, he would’ve remembered them if they had hurt.
Lips replaced fingers, and they must have burned, as Dick gasped and writhed beneath him, hands tangling in Nixon’s mop of dark hair that had grown past regulation length. Wet kisses moved down the length of Dick’s torso, stopping to take inventory of those scars of varying sizes. After what felt like an eternity of waiting, Lewis’ lips reached their intended goal and he took his friend’s hardened cock into his mouth.
Dick had moaned, his body shifting constantly beneath Nixon, unable to keep still for more than second. He would push Lewis away, only to pull him back again, begging him to not stop, murmuring that he’d never felt anything so amazing.
After he was spent, Winters lay unmoving on his side, looking at Lewis who felt even more naked under the scrutiny of his friend’s green eyes. Determined to not look away, Lewis starred right back at him, challenging his friend’s gaze, willing him to say whatever it was that he was thinking. Finally sighing, Dick rolled over onto his back and shifted his eyes to look toward the ceiling.
“That can’t happen again.”
“Sure.”
It didn’t.
—
Lewis sat in his study, pretending to read as he drank because Dick said that it was awful that all of those books were never opened by him. He didn’t even bother with glasses anymore, he finished the bottles too quickly to justify it, and what was the sense in creating dirty dishes. It was far too late for him to still be awake, but Dick wasn’t in bed either, he could hear him moving around upstairs.
Leaving the bottle and the book, Nixon carefully made his way up the steps, following the light to Dick’s bedroom, to find him sitting on the edge of his bed. Standing in the doorway for a moment, Lewis watched him just sit there, wringing his hands together and alternating between starring at them and starring straight ahead. Finally having enough of the silence, Lewis moved into the room and carefully sat beside him on the bed. Dick didn’t acknowledge his presence.
“What is it?” Lewis finally asked.
“I don’t know,” Winters replied.
Lewis joined him in starring at his hands, pursing his lips together. Dick had held onto his allure through training, through their years spent in tents and in Europe, and Lewis recalled the instant when he began to see it leave.
It wasn’t being home in America that was destroying Dick Winters’ elegance – it was him. Lewis felt as though he had a hand in the killing of his best friend, and was completely at a loss for how to deal with the emotions that he found caught in his throat as he tried to speak. “Maybe you should sleep in here tonight.”
“Maybe.”
He did.
Lewis felt colder than he had ever felt in Bastogne.
—
In the morning, Lewis was alone in the house. He smoked a pack of cigarettes before noon, and drank a bottle of whiskey before two o’clock. For the entirety of the day, he sat in a chair and waited, save for when he was finally able to bring himself to look in Dick’s bedroom. He hadn’t brought many possessions with him, but the dresser drawers and closet were empty.
Lewis was alone in the house the following day as well, and the day after that, and the sickening pattern continued for months before he finally realized that Dick wasn’t coming home.
—
Eventually there was a letter, but Lewis didn’t read it, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it out either. He kept it on the dresser in what had been Dick’s bedroom, because he couldn’t stand to even look at the envelope and Dick’s neat handwriting.
There was no one around to pick up the empty bottles anymore.
Summary: Jake’s given and taken orders a hundred times throughout his career but nothing compares to the moment he realizes you liked it.
Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x F!Reader
Word Count: 2.1K
Rating: 18+ only. Sexual content. Authority and sir kink, praise kink and Hangman being a cocky asshole.
A/N: Thank you @wildbornsiren and @whatblogisthis216 for beta'ing and @blue-aconite for the beautiful graphic. In the future I may write part 2 if my muses cooperate. Reblogs and comments feed the muse.
Masterlist ♡ Top Gun Masterlist
Jake doesn’t pay much attention when you’re first introduced with the rest of the eggheads from the Office of Naval Research. Another one of many civilian engineers working on the new plane he’s been assigned to test. You keep things professional and polite although he can tell you find him attractive. It’s written all over your face and demeanor. You’re not the only one, several of the other engineers can’t seem to string together a full sentence around him.
You’re pretty, he can admit that much to himself, but a sweet face has never been enough on its own to hold his interest. Especially when he’s here to do a job, one he takes very seriously. The chance to be the first to fly the latest prototype jet isn’t an opportunity that comes up often. He volunteered immediately for the assignment when it came up, beating out most of his Top Gun class for the honor.
What he doesn’t bank on is having to sit through mind numbingly boring briefings and listen to the engineers argue anytime the tiniest adjustment is made. Most of his exposure to you is during these meetings but the first time you talk to him one on one is four weeks into the project.
That’s when he notices your particular….quirk. You’re following him out after the morning briefing, yammering away about the new wing design specs. He’s read your report in detail and already familiarized himself with the changes.
All Jake wants is a moment of silence to mentally prepare himself for today's test but you keep talking. It doesn’t help that he’s got the beginning of a headache forming behind his eyes and you’re oblivious to his attempts to cut the conversation short.
“I got it. I know how to fly a plane,” he tells you.
“Lieutenant Seresin,” you start but he cuts you off with a look.
“I’ve read your briefing packet, top to bottom. It was extremely thorough. If I have questions you’ll be the first person I ask. Scout’s honor,” he adds, giving you a sloppy half salute that seems to confuse you for a moment before you start talking again.
“I just want to make sure-“ you begin and Jake sighs, annoyed.
“I got it. Now go sit down,” he tells you curtly.
You step back back, brows raised. Jake almost misses the way your pupils dilate and your lips part just so.
"I'm sorry, Sir," you reply. "I..."You stammer and tug at the hem of your shirt before hurrying to take a seat.
You watch him from behind the computer bank as he climbs into the cockpit and fiddles with the controls. He can feel you watching him as he puts his helmet on. It’s clear to him that you want his approval, even if you don’t realize it.
Fuck, that paired with the ‘sir’ and the delicious little waver in your voice spikes his interest. He waits until you’re practically squirming in your chair before he gives you a nod. Your response is immediate, shoulders dropping and the tense lines on your face easing.
It’s not just that he makes you nervous, he’s seen that plenty of times before. No, this is different. Special. You liked it when he barked an order at you.
–
Over the next few weeks, he watches you closely, taking note of your responses to everyone you interact with. It’s clear you crave praise from others, perking up under any compliment you receive and deflating under criticism. However, it’s your response to authority that interests him most. You’ve got a natural inclination to listen to orders but as far as Jake can tell he’s the only one who elicits that type of reaction from you.
Each encounter he has with you is a chance to test the theory he has. He catalogs the difference in your responses; when he’s softer in his requests versus an outright order. Jake sees how quickly you obey a demand to sit next to him at the next briefing, just so he can be close to you. The speed you produce a new report just for him is a powerful thing. He especially loves the way you blossom under his praise when he compliments changes you've made to improve performance.
You’re smart, undeterred when the men in the room try to speak over you. Even though you’re quiet-natured, you’re no pushover either. He respects your determination and hard work.
The most telling moment is one afternoon when you’re loitering on the edge of the hanger as he finishes up his conversation with the flight chief. It’s clear you need to speak to him. The fact that you won’t interrupt him is just a bonus– something he knows from experience will translate well in the bedroom.
“Come here,” he commands, crooking a finger at you. He doesn’t even have to raise his voice to have you scurrying to him. You touch your chest and fiddle with the locket you wear, twisting the thin gold chair around your index finger. Jake’s not sure if he’s just gotten better at clocking your reactions or you’re extra affected today but whatever the reason, he’s enjoying the show.
“What do you need?” He asks.
“For you to sign the report,” you tell him, opening the folder and pointing to the highlighted portion.
When he takes the pen from you he makes sure to drag his fingertips over the back of your hand, watching for your reaction behind his aviators. The soft sound that passes your lips doesn't disappoint him. He thinks about what other sounds he could drag out of you. How he could get you desperate enough to beg him to fuck you. The way you’d sigh his name and -
“Sir?” Your soft voice snaps him out of his little daydream. You’re staring up at him expectantly. “I need my pen back, please.”
When he hands it back, you smile. It makes him long to pull you against him and kiss you breathless. To test out the limits of how well you’d listen to him but he knows he has to wait until the project is over. He’s not about to jeopardize either of your careers though as the weeks drag on he certainly finds himself fantasizing about that.
You’ve caught him staring at during the morning briefings once or twice, his chin resting on steepled fingers. It’s always the same response from you, the double blink and glance away. Sometimes you’ll bite your lips and fiddle with the pencil, tapping it in rapid succession against the table. He can feel your eyes on him too and he has to repress a smirk. These morning briefings are starting to become his favorite part of the day.
—
Two torturous months pass before the admiral visits and the project gets wrapped up. He has some innocent fun with you during that time, nothing overly mean, just enough to get you flustered and stoke the flame. His favorite form of foreplay.
The team celebrates at the Hard Deck. Alcohol flows freely and spirits are high. It turns out engineers partied harder than pilots. You only have a drink which bodes well for Jake. He needs you sober for this and wants a clear head of his own, nursing a single beer most of the night.
While he waits for an opportunity to get you alone he formulates how he wants to approach this. He doesn’t doubt his assessment. He’s rarely wrong about these things but it’s always possible you’re not completely aware of your quirk. If he embarrassed or frightened you all his waiting would be for nothing.
After another hour or so he senses his chance. You head outside to take a quick call and Jake follows. He waits at a safe distance to give you some privacy but once you slide the phone back into your jacket he makes his presence known.
“Lieutenant Seresin,” you greet. You look surprised to see him but pleased too.
“It’s Jake,” he corrects, stepping toward you.
When he presses into your space you take a half step back and then another, letting him herd you into a little alcove out of sight. You watch him curiously, maybe even a little confused. You’re not scared to be alone with him —you trust him.
“What’s up?” You’re trying for casual but failing adorably.
Jake’s close enough to touch you, but refrains from it. He won’t until he has your permission and understanding. He smirks and tits his head. A direct approach might be quicker but he’s curious if you’ll figure it out on your own.
“I know your secret, sweetheart,” he whispers.
That gets you going. You don’t seem to know where to put your hands. Nervous laughter comes next but Jake stays quiet, letting you squirm a little longer.
“My secret?” You question.
“It’s compatible with mine,” he hints.
You frown, forehead wrinkling. He recognizes the expression from countless morning briefings when you were contemplating a problem. It’s cute watching your brain work in real-time to put the pieces together. A full minute passes before your eyes dart back to his face, surprised.
He nods encouragingly and then very hesitantly you say, “Is that so, sir?”
There’s a heavy emphasis on the last word.
“Smart girl,” he praises.
You grin and rock back on your heels. “Well, I did design the aircraft you’ve been flying the last four months,” you shoot back.
He can see the struggle it is for you not to smile. You’re proud of your work and should be but he can’t have you mouthing off already.
“Don’t get smart with me,” he warns playfully, loving the way you immediately duck your head.
“Sorry, sir.”
You sound appropriately contrite and he smirks.
“Look at me.” Two fingers under your chin encourage you to meet his gaze. “I want you to be honest,” he begins, watching carefully for any sign you’re not on the same page as him. “Do you want to do this?”
“Do you mean…you mean sex, right?” You ask, looking a little unsure.
You’re so sweet that Jake slips character briefly to give you the soft smile you deserve. “Sex and more,” he confirms. “I can help you explore this side of yourself.”
“Yeah. I want that,” you tell him shyly.
“That’s good to hear, but that’s not how you talk to me, and I think you know it.”
“I want you to teach me, sir,” you respond.
“Better,” he praises.
He slides a hand up your jaw to grasp the back of your neck and angle your face upward so he can crush his lips against yours. He closes the distance between your bodies, pressing you back into the wall with a groan. You make a desperate little sound that goes right to his dick and grasp his biceps tightly.
You part your lips and fuck, he’s finally tasting you fully like he’s been imagining. He loves how soft and warm you are in his arms and the way his lips slide against yours. All of his pent-up desire is out now. The hand at your hip slides down the curve of your ass to grasp your thigh so he can grind shamelessly against you. You whimper, nails pressing into his skin. He rocks his half-hard cock into the warmest part of you, needing more friction. He wants to hear you make that little sound again too.
“Oh, please,” you gasp when you finally part.
You sound wrecked and he thinks you look it too.The skin of your face is warm to the touch and your eyes are a little glassy. Jake's half convinced you might let him have you here and for a moment he actually considers it. He knows how good that kind of messy, quick fuck can be but tonight he wants to see all of you. To spend his time taking you apart until you’re incoherent and at his mercy. He can’t do that here.
“Easy,” Jake whispers, running a hand down your back. “Look at me,” he instructs, smiling when you do. You’re trembling all over and he rubs his thumb over your swollen lips as he gazes down at you. “Catch your breath.”
Once you’re calm he lets go of you and runs a hand through his hair. You’re watching him, waiting to be told what to do. “Go inside, say goodbye to your friends. Then I want you to meet me out front. Got it?”
You nod and he surges forward to kiss you one more time before stepping back to let you past him.
Fuck, tonight is going to be good he thought.
♡
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