It’s too cold to sleep alone now, and so for the first time in days Gale finds himself face to face with John.
They haven’t been connecting. The bitter winter has nestled into everyone’s bones, making conversations terse and moods brittle. John’s, in particular. Gale knows that he itches to get out more than ever, and resents Gale for stopping him from acting reckless when recklessness would be part of any attempt at escape. He misses him so much it hurts. It aches in his stomach alongside the hunger, and throbs in his head alongside the exhaustion. It’s making Gale weaker at doing his job. Each day more and more of his brain power is spent fretting over John, mourning the loss of the warmth in their friendship, than it is looking after the others, or himself.
He looks weaker. Weight seems to be slipping off him faster than anyone else. His face, clean shaven before where others had sported moustaches or scruff as long as regulation would allow, has become stubbly in a way that doesn’t suit him. His scars have settled more pink than white. Gale would not describe himself as vain, but he liked to look good. Put together and neat. Healthy. He catches himself in pails of water, tiny tin mirrors and the foggy surface of the few windows that have glass, and he feels entirely unlike himself.
John points this out immediately.
Gale isn’t sure if he’s trying to hurt him. He doubts that John would stoop low enough to insult his appearance, especially when he isn’t looking much better, but his tongue is careless and biting these days, and it hurts either way.
“You’re scrawny,” he says, climbing up into Gale’s bunk and rolling onto his side to face him.
It’s an uncomfortable closeness out of the shadowy blue, but the only other way they’ll fit is spooning, and neither of them feel friendly enough for that until it’s time to sleep. John pinches the skin on Gale’s cheekbone like a mother might pinch fat there on a child. Gale bats his hand away.
“So’s everyone,” Gale says.
“Nah,” John says. “Not like you.”
“Well, thanks,” Gale says. “If you got any food to share I don’t know why you’re holdin’ back.”
“I didn’t mean-” John makes a sound in the back of his throat, a kind of clipped ugh. “Sorry.” He rubs at his forehead with a gloved hand. Turns his face toward the threadbare mattress and sighs deep. Gale wrinkles his nose; it’s a disgusting bed. “Worried you’re disappearing, is all.”
“Ain’t that what you wanna do?” Gale says.
It’s particularly harsh, coming from him. But John just looks at him, jaw set and gaze steady, and his lips tug upward in an awful, bitter grimace.
“Mm,” he hums. “Yeah. Guess so.”
Gale aches all over. He drops his head down into the palm of his hand, closing his eyes. John’s breath tickles his face, the only warm thing here, and Gale wonders if he tries hard enough he can imagine they’re in England again. If he tries really hard, he might imagine that they’re in London. That Gale went with John after all, and that neither of them ever ended up in this place. The wind rattles through the splintering boards of their hut, a sound Gale has only ever heard here, and he shivers.
“C’mon,” John whispers. Gale opens his eyes again, and allows John to pull him closer to his body. John’s hand curls over his hip, slides under his coat and up his ribs, and he visibly winces. “Jesus, Buck.”
“I know,” Gale says, because there isn’t much else he can say.
“You givin’ your rations away?” John says.
Gale thinks about lying for a moment, but there’s no point. “Some.”
John stares at him. His eyes are shiny, almost black in the dark. “Why?”
Gale doesn’t give him an answer. None would satisfy John; that there are men that need it more, that Gale has been too distracted to eat, that he’s been hungry so long he’s almost forgotten what it feels like to not be. That it grounds him a little. He shrugs. John looks semi-murderous, and it’s the most tethered expression Gale’s seen him wear in weeks. He takes one of Gale’s wrists in hand, fingers curling all the way around even with the added padding of his gloves.
“You think this is good?” he says. “You think this is gonna help the others?”
Gale goes to wrench his wrist from his grip at the same moment that someone below them stirs. They freeze, John holding his pulse-point, fingers tight around him. When the air stills and it sounds like they’ve woken no-one, Gale lets out the breath he was holding.
“You think this is gonna help anyone?” John says again, a low hiss this time. Gale tries to pull himself free, but John just drags his other arm out from under the thin covers, grasping both of Gale’s wrists in one big hand. “You like this? If they ask us to march tomorrow, you think you’ll get far?”
Gale’s heart is pounding. John wasn’t this angry at him when they fought. Has perhaps never been this angry at him, and Gale can’t look away from John’s hand. Holding both of his wrists like a bird. He knew it was bad. He knew he’d been reckless, too, in his own way. Posturing as selfless and sticking out his bony chest like a big boy, when the truth is he’d lost his appetite, like a girl who’s been chucked by her sweetheart. He supposes he has felt a little like that, too.
Staring at the difference between them now, Gale finds it hard to catch his breath. Something like hunger finally builds.
John looks at him. Gale sees realisation click in his expression, as his face falls open, curious and wide-eyed. He grips Gale’s wrists tighter, exaggerating how far his fingers can encircle them, and Gale, still staring, gasps.
“You do,” John whispers. “You like this.”
“No,” Gale finally finds his voice. It comes out too loud, and both of them freeze up again, listening for signs of disturbances in the hut. When nobody stirs, Gale repeats, quieter, “No. Ain’t proud of it, Bucky. But you’re out there playin’ imaginary baseball, edging closer to that fence all the time. How is that better?”
“I didn’t say that you’re proud of it,” John says. His voice is low beyond the volume, dripping with something sweet and sinister. “I said you like this.”
He shakes Gale’s wrists in his hold. Gale pulls them loose, finally, shaking his head against the pillow. John won’t drop it, though. He snakes his hand up and under Gale’s sleeve, past the sharpness of his elbow, coming to rest just above it. John’s fingers curl around his bicep, all sinew and wasting muscle, and Gale shivers. John has barely touched him recently. Above all else it’s perilous here, and they’re living on top of each other in great swathes of beaten down men. Gale has hardly even masturbated. Less dangerous- and others have, he’s heard them. But Gale’s been so tired, so empty, it’s as if his body hasn’t had an ounce of energy to spare for even the most perfunctory pleasures. The last time he’d brought himself off had been two weeks ago, listening to the unmistakable, muffled sounds of John doing the same. Afterwards, he’d just felt miserable.
It’s probably that. Restless need coming to the surface in the end, as it was always going to do eventually.
He’s never thought much of the size difference between him and John, because there isn’t much to think about. John’s a hair taller, and undeniably broader, but not in any significant way. Gale has bulk and strength from the oil fields, relentless military training and a healthy, standard diet. He’s not small. Not by any means.
Wasn’t.
But Gale has watched John with people far smaller. With women, mostly. Slight women; short barmaids, even some of the taller Red Cross girls look dwarfed by him. Gale didn’t think he wanted to be picked up and spun around like he’s seen John do with them. Gale has never been with another man before; had made it abundantly clear since the start of whatever their arrangement is that he didn’t want to be emasculated, or treated like one of John’s girls. The pet names had snuck in slowly, at Gale’s reluctance at first. John called him doll, called him sweetheart, and the only reason Gale allowed him to continue was because it was easier than trying to remind him to stop. They rolled off John’s tongue with such practiced ease it’s like he didn’t think twice about them. Gale’s become fine with being John’s sweetheart. He still isn’t his girl.
But John is eclipsing him now. And it’s doing something. It is doing something.
He takes his hand out of Gale’s sleeve, rucking up the layers of moth eaten wool and scratching cotton, and puts it on his waist. Splays his long fingers across the deep curve made from Gale lying on his side. John’s index finger follows the valley under his ribs; his thumb nearly brushing the notches of Gale’s spine.
“This is scary,” John says, too honest, at the same time as Gale asks, “Your hands always been this big?”
“Jesus, Buck,” John says. He hasn’t let go. “You’ve lost the plot.”
Gale is aware. Gale is also, for the first time in weeks, getting hard. “Sure, Bucky. What was the score today?”
“Christ, what’s wrong with you?” He moves his leg between Gale’s thighs as he says it. “What’s gotten into you, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Gale whispers. He grabs onto John’s hip, pulls himself closer, dragging himself over the sturdy surface of John’s thigh. He gasps, head falling forward into the curve of John’s neck. “Jesus, John.”
John’s fingers continue to dance across his ribs. He seems hesitant at first, feather-light and unsure, but as Gale continues to grind himself down on his thigh his touch grows harder. He taps each bone like his hand is climbing a ladder. Runs down the sharp, knotted length of his spine, flattening at the small of his back, so big Gale can almost feel his fingers on either side of his body.
“You’re freezing,” John says.
“You’re so warm,” Gale says back, muffled by John’s shoulder.
“I’m serious, Buck. You’re like a corpse.”
Gale moans then. It’s swallowed up by John’s coat collar, but they both hear it; both halt, stock-still. John moves his hands from Gale’s ribs slowly. Tangles his fingers in his hair and pulls gently, so that Gale’s face is exposed to look at. They’re both panting. John looks terrified. Gale knows he must look the same. He blinks hard, and finds, embarrassingly, that his eyes are wet.
“What the fuck,” John whispers. Gale just shakes his head. “Gale.”
Gale swallows. After a long while he says, in a strangled voice, “It’s hard, being here.”
“Gale,” John says again.
“Just tonight,” Gale says. He doesn’t know how to verbalise it. That John feels safe, his body feels all-encompassing, hot and like home; and that Gale doesn’t mind the idea of being something rotten and frozen all the same. John is here, and at the same time Gale is not. Balance. The best of both worlds, before they have to return to the one they are in. “Please.”
John brushes a thumb over Gale’s cheek. He looks at him for a long time. Frowning, like he’s trying to solve a problem in his head.
“Alright,” he says. Then he tilts his head to one side, kissing beneath his jaw, licking a stripe along the gooseflesh of Gale’s neck. Gale closes his eyes again, and can’t help the sound that escapes him as John presses his lips to his throat, whispers, “Can hardly find your pulse.”
“Bucky,” Gale groans.
He starts grinding down on John’s thigh, getting himself off on the friction alone. John finds his wrists again, one big hand capturing both in a tight grip, and Gale whimpers.
“You’re wasting away,” John says. He moves his leg against Gale’s crotch, making him whine. “You’re half gone.”
“Jesus,” Gale says.
“Could snap you in half,” John continues. “But I won’t. I wouldn’t. Wanna get you home in my- fuck- in my pocket.”
Gale moans, “John. John-”
“Christ, fuckin’ noisy,” John hisses, and sticks two fingers in Gale’s mouth.
He reaches into Gale’s pants, then. Takes a hold of his cock and strokes him once, twice, before climbing on top of him as quietly as he can and taking himself out of his pants, too. John grabs a hold of them both in one fist. Gale sobs around his fingers. John’s cock against his own, his body above him so much bigger than his now, it sends Gale’s eyes rolling, feet kicking against the filthy mattress. John pumps them both with one hand, his other still occupied between his teeth. Gale claws at his thick wrist desperately.
“You gonna be quiet, huh?” John whispers, strained and raw at the edges.
Gale nods as best he can. John takes his fingers out of his mouth, and Gale drags in a hushed, ragged breath. His eyes are wet, he thinks, but it hardly registers as John puts his free hand back on his waist. John’s cock is leaking over Gale’s as he works them both, precum pooling in the hollowing rift between Gale’s hip bones.
“There’s not gonna be much left of you,” John whispers. He sounds sad, like he isn’t playing their game anymore, but it does it for Gale either way.
He comes over his stomach and John’s hand, with a stifled moan through gritted teeth. John’s fist speeds up, and Gale writhes in oversensitivity as John doesn’t let go of his cock, working them in tandem until John comes on him, too.
Gale feels sort of sick.
He cleans himself off with the edge of his shabby blanket. It’s disgusting, and Gale tries his best to position the sticky corner away from himself, but the alternative was a sock and he would like to keep all of his toes tonight. John looks at him like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. He sighs. Presses a dry kiss to Gale’s forehead, the first in weeks, and turns him onto his side. Gale falls into a fitful, shivering sleep. John’s fingers won’t stop tracing his bones.
gale whump drabble (1k) from a prompt from @girlswiththecurls who said ‘gale alone in the shower covered in bruises and generally messed up. he’s trying to be super quiet so he can clean up and no one realizes he's there or that anything happened’
i tweaked a little for yaoi’s sake lol but this gave me the excuse and inspiration to finallyy do something with my mute gale idea that i rambled about in this post like. over a year ago so. yay thank u !!! <3
•~•~•~•
“They try get you to talk?”
Gale spits blood out of his mouth. Hopes that it’s just from his gums— feels a twist of something in his gut when he coughs, and more comes up from somewhere deeper. He watches the back of John’s head. Turned dutifully away, smoke drifting from his bargained cigarette.
“Told them you wouldn’t,” he carries on. “Guess they thought I was just being complimentary.”
Gale prods at a particularly enraged bruise. He can make out the shape of a boot. The edge of the contusion has a vicious cut to it, that flakes dried blood into the bottom of the shower like shedding rust. He’s not sure how to take John’s wording. Like he’d have told the Krauts about their planes if he could. He pulls gravel from the graze and grits his teeth.
Then John says, “Not that they’d get jack out of you anyways,” and Gale relaxes as much as he can with at least one cracked bone.
He’s grown increasingly appreciative of how easily John seems to read his mind without Gale saying. Without John even looking.
He’d been right there when the Krauts shoved Gale back out into the snow. An arm bracing his ribs, his bulk holding Gale upright enough that it wasn’t glaringly obvious how much of his weight John was really taking. He half-hauled Gale straight to the showers and barked out the scarce few men that were braving the cold to wash. Gale had let him peel off his coat before shoving his hand hard into the centre of John’s chest.
“Buck,” he’d said. Gale grit his teeth, and shook his head. “Buck, ain’t anything I’ve not seen.”
It wasn’t true. John’s seen Gale in his skivvies, go from toned and fleshed out to worn and whittled down, has seen the way his stomach muscles tense when he’s about to vomit, or to come, but Gale could tell he hadn’t seen him like this. Could tell by the way his sweater was sticking to something hot and wet, and the way each breath hurt like the steel-toed boots were still all up in his lungs, that there was a mess beneath his layers that John didn’t need to see. He’d get the Doc. He’d have to tell the Doc what had happened, because Gale wouldn’t say. He’d have to tell the Doc that Gale couldn’t say. So he’d fixed John with a look until he relented, clearly miserable but turning his back either way. Staying cautiously close as Gale dragged off the rest of his clothes, shivering and wincing immediately.
John’s finished his smoke, now. Gale knows if they were back in England he’d light up another, but there’s no more to be had here so he fidgets instead.
“How bad is it?” he asks. Gale can pick out the nerves in his voice.
He looks down at his torso. The boot-bruise is the deepest, but there are other marks that don’t look good. A mottled purple smudge down by his hip. An angry red gash from a belt, and one Gale can’t see but can probe on his back— a twin set. The main worries, though, are that boot print, and a head wound that’s making him dizzy. He thinks it was the butt of a Walther, but it all aches too much to be sure. He’s had to get his hair wet to wash out the gash, and doesn’t know which is a more urgent concern; potential concussion or potential hypothermia. His nail beds are blue, so he guesses the cold might get him first.
Glancing up at John, making sure he’s still facing away and shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, Gale gets his fingertips around a stubborn shard of muck in the cut on his forehead. He sucks in a breath. Digs.
It hurts worse than expected, and in doubling over he coughs again, more gore splattering the drain and a wave of nausea making him stumble.
“Shit,” he hears John hiss, and Gale doesn’t think there’s enough blood left in his head for his cheeks to flush as he half-drops, half-lowers himself to the floor. John’s by his side fast, face swimming in Gale’s vision. “Jesus, Buck. Why wouldn’t you let me look? Huh? You think I wasn’t gonna notice all this?”
Gale screws his eyes shut. Breathes deep through his nose, through the pain and the sudden faintness, and his hand flies out to find John’s sleeve. John isn’t letting him curl up in the bottom of the freezing shower, and Gale gags on air as he’s lifted upward with the motion of a sickly yawing ship, placed unceremoniously onto some nearby bench.
“Why didn’t you say it was this bad?” John’s carefully towelling him off with a rag. Wrapping him back up in his damp clothes, then his own coat on top of Gale’s, and when Gale finally opens his eyes again John’s looking at him with a mix of fear and pleading. And, Gale thinks, a tiny bit of hurt. He says again, quieter and somehow more desperate, “Why won’t you say?”
Gale gnaws his lip. Swallows around blood and nothing, and jerks his head.
John sighs, pushing back Gale’s hair to inspect the laceration. “Alright,” he says, gentle. “Okay. How many fingers?”
He holds up four, and Gale— after a glare— holds up the same. John’s next sigh sounds a bit more like relief.
“I’m takin’ you to the Doc.”
Gale opens his mouth like any protest will come out, but John’s got words to speak and does so with no room for argument.
“I know. I know, doll, you don’t— you got kicked in the throat, alright? You got a cold. You’ll have one anyway, Jesus Christ. I’ll do the talking today, and if it’s still bad when you got talking in you again then you can explain it all in more detail. Yeah?”
Gale’s getting too tired to think. Too dog-tired to overthink John’s flimsy plan, too exhausted in general to wonder how much longer he can hide his periods of silence from the Doc, or half the other men that haven’t noticed so far. He nods weakly, and John pulls him to his feet.
“Tell me if it hurts.”
Gale almost laughs. He leans on John, and nods again.
He’s so hungry it hurts. Carlos’ voice is worsening it. Jannik can nearly taste his words, how warm and alive he is, and his stomach clenches with a sharp pain, forcing an audible whine.
“If I was there,” level, brave, “what would you do?”
Jannik presses the balled-up shirt into the hollow of his gut. He’s shaking with how empty he is. Words tumbling in a desperate slurry, punched out of him: “I would eat all of you.”
getting killed by a pretty good life on ao3. heated rivalry, 9.3k, E.
Shane feels like he might be sick. He crouches down in front of Ilya, slowly, and takes in the reams of scattered notes around them; scrawled Cyrillic, cross-hatched abrasions where the pen has ripped all the way through, a couple of illegible English words dotting the chaos here and there. It looks like a crime scene.
“What, uh,” Shane starts haltingly, sucking in a shaky breath before trying again. “What’s all this, Ilya?”
Ilya finally seems to notice that he’s there. He looks at him with wide eyes, red-rimmed, like he’s cried at some point then scrubbed furiously at the tears. Dreadfully, he laughs.
“I know, I know.” Gale’s trying to draw John’s attention back to him now, before he vaults over his own stall and throttles the guy in broad daylight. “But without proof we gotta think about what. Don’t– don’t go messin’ up your face for nothin’, okay?”
This pulls John’s gaze back to Gale, his eyes going from glaring daggers to soft, crinkled at the edges with a flirty smirk. “You care about my pretty face, Buck?”
Gale bites the inside of his cheek to hide his own smile. “Flatter yourself. Didn’t say nothin’ about pretty.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
or: a very silly farmer’s market thriller au for beloved @irregularcollapse’s bday ✨
hello dear. have you been thinking thoughts about gale lately? i have, and my most recent thoughts have been about what if we just drop him into a forest for a while and he'll have to live ('live' - with nothing there apart from the forest i suppose) there abandoned, alone and then he is feral forest gale? :)
sweet anon i love this i loveee feral galey i have several mental versions of feral gale so yessss… i feel like the obvious route would be leaving him in the woods after the escape for way longer than it ends up being (altho i’m immediately distracted by the idea of pre-canon teen runaway gale living like this before he gets his ass to flight school and he’s not socialised and super off putting until bucky breaks him down bc he’s so immediately bewitched and gets him talking more n involved more until he’s mostly assimilated but that feral edge still comes out sometimes…) but anyway fkfjfk let’s leave him in the woods after the stalag for a while..
sexy to me if after he Eventually is found he immediately leaves the air force and moves in to some shack house with a huge garden and becomes the town Strange Guy who’s still dashingly handsome (when he remembers to shave and obviously there’s those scars and the fact his hairs growing all out of sorts and he don’t eat much anymore bc the taste and texture of meat turns him sick after having to hunt for any of it he could find to survive). and he just ‘tends’ to his garden (it’s wildly overgrown to look at but makes sense to him) and keeps to himself.. margie checks in on him of course and he can still smile at her and kind of hold a conversation but it hurts her so much to see him.. half the time his bed is so obviously untouched he just sleeps under the stars.
and when john comes over obviously gale doesn’t think he’s real. he’s stopped opening mail and answering the phone, never wanted confirmation that john died, it doesn’t feel natural the way people write and talk so formal and veiled in niceties and half truths now. and when john comes over and sees gale just lying in his garden, curled up in a hedge row and mostly asleep, he’s like okay he was warned but this is kind of… but it’s a morning problem or maybe a next few days or weeks problem maybe whatever This is is a forever problem now but. in the meantime he just lies down behind gale. thinks about covering him with his coat but gets the feeling that won’t be right for this gale so he just wraps an arm around him instead and gale doesn’t even react because he’s imagined this so often it’s not like it’s real. and they just both sleep there like that all night
this must be the place (clegan, 3.9k, serious injury, hurt/ no comfort)
They have to break it again.
John is told this in a hushed frenzy, barely one foot in the stalag and still bleeding sluggishly, and Benny tells him that they have to re-break Buck’s arm.
or: the broken arm fic. this fic is one year old today!!!! and it’s maybe my favourite one i’ve posted for the mota fandom. it never got its own post on here because at the time of publishing i uploaded it anonymously, and i thought maybe self-indulgently that on its first birthday it should finally get a proper post. i’ve been so blessed by the love it’s received over the last year, and i’ve seen an influx of people on tumblr wanting gale whump, so if you haven’t read it i’m bringing it to your attention now. very graphic life-threatening injury, established but secret relationship, ambiguous ending, so much blood and angst. happy birthday gale broken arm <33
re: gale whump i am always thinking about that one snippet you wrote post-war of bucky asking gale if any of his hallucinated buddies are around that morning and john going “i get you all to myself huh” if that sandbox continues to spark any joy……🫶🫶
wahhhh i do have a fair amount of this fic still but the WIP died in my brain,.., maybe i’ll post the first two sections which are done (summer: gale vomits on john’s dick, and winter: gale gets so skinny in the stalag that he ends up getting off on a necro fantasy when john says he looks like he’s already dead) but re: spring (gale seeing ghosts) this is the end of what i’ve got so far so. that says how well it’s going 😭 hallucinating gale come back to me,,..
