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Moonshot - Part 8

Clegan Astronaut AU. Official sequel to To the Moon and Back.

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: One year after Artemis 3. One year after Shackleton. One year after John almost lost his life and Gale almost lost his husband. But after a long, tough recovery, Artemis 4 is ready to launch, and it's Gale's turn to step foot on the moon. (And they are still obnoxiously in love. Even more so than before).

Author's Note: I am so sorry that it has been so long. Life has been a lot lately. If anyone cares to know: I finally completed my first graduate degree, I'm gearing up for a long distance move so I can go start the next one, and I'm planning a wedding! Oh, and Artemis II of course. Thank you to everyone who nerded out with me about the real life mission :) But in any case, I hope you enjoy this update about our space boys. We are getting close to launch!

I reccommend first reading "Flicker" from Soon You'll Get Better.

---

It’s not easy to fly away when the world is dragging you down, but Gale did.

It’s not easy to find where you belong when someone else has pounded into you that you don’t belong at all. It’s not easy to figure out who you are, or carve out a path in the universe, or grow into someone good and kind. It’s not easy to run away when you’re equally afraid of what’s ahead of you and what’s behind.

It’s not easy. But Gale did it anyway.

Bucky would never know anything about that, and he didn’t know just how glad he should be for it until he met Gale. Bucky has never had to know, even for a moment, what it feels like to keep writing a story when you wish you could erase everything already on the page. But he’s seen glimpses over the years. Just little moments, looks, things Gale has said.

He’s seen some of the words from the beginning of the story, written and rewritten, and he can’t help but think that Gale had every right to become someone different.

But he didn’t.

He stands in the light of the morning sun, dressed in a NASA flight suit decorated with mission patches, walking away from the place where he grew up for the second time in his life. He looks to the sky, head high, shoulders back, nothing in his way.

A little boy comes up to them at the Casper airport, a shy little thing with shaggy blonde hair and bright blue eyes. His mother nudges him forward and waits with a kind smile, watching her son come face to face with the person he wants to grow up to be. He can’t be more than six or seven, Bucky thinks. He asks them if they’re really astronauts.

Gale, taken by surprise, takes off his sunglasses and kneels down to the kid’s level.

“Sure are,” he says. Then he points over to Bucky. “This guy here even went to the moon.”

Bucky laughs and stands with his hand on Gale’s shoulder. “Well this guy is about to go there, too.”

Gale could’ve been anyone, but he became the kind of person who kids look up to, who they want to be someday. Sure, Bucky’s found himself there, too, somehow. But Gale… Gale is the one that they should admire. Gale is the one who deserves it the most.

Bucky watches his husband with this little boy, this spitting image of who he once must have been. He even has a little toy plane in his pocket, which he takes out to show them oh so proudly. Gale smiles at him, talks to him, holds the toy plane and asks him about it, lets him touch the patches on his shoulders and chest. He explains what each of them mean, why each one is important.

And all Bucky can think is that this is the man he married a year ago, and he’s perfect.

He watches Gale pull an Artemis challenge coin out of his bag, handing it to the little boy and explaining it in the same way they explained it to Maggie. The kid takes it, eyes bright with awe. He clutches it to his chest. Someday, he’ll look at the coin, and he’ll remember the man who gave it to him just weeks before landing on the moon.

“You can be anything you wanna be,” Gale tells him. “Remember that. The sky can be yours. You just have to reach for it.”

Right there, lit by the sun like an angel walking this earth, is the man Bucky fell in love with, and he wonders if he’s really talking to the boy, or if he’s saying it to some younger version of himself.

You can be anything you wanna be. You just have to reach for it.

In the end, Bucky supposes, Buck Cleven chose to be someone good.

—

The next couple weeks pass by in a blur. They train nonstop, what feels like every waking moment. Every single aspect of the mission, pushing and pushing until they feel like they’ve got it right. The few moments when they come up for air, the crew is putting on smiles for interviews with the media or studying up on the experiments they need to conduct on the mission, meeting with science specialists and engineers and NASA suits. Morning to night, at the Center, falling into bed and straight to sleep with hardly a word.

It takes a few days, but Gale seems to have moved on from the visit to Casper. The grind leading up to launch can do that. At the very least, he’s shoving it down where he can’t let it interfere with the mission. Bucky’s tried to talk to him about it a handful of times, in the precious moments of quiet they have. But Gale brushes it off or tells Bucky that he's fine, that he doesn’t need to talk about it, that they have too much to do to worry about things like that. So Bucky just has to let it go, too.

It’s like he and Gale got that one final night under the stars, one surreal moment away from it all, and now they’re back in full force. It’s worth it, though. It reminds Bucky that this is what Gale loves, just as much as he does. He knows that all of the grueling days are worth it, when he sees the pure glee on Gale’s face, looking up at the stars or walking out of a successful sim or telling an interviewer about the mission and how excited he is for it.

There’s this one day where the Today Show comes in to film a piece to air right before the launch. They get some footage of the crew training in the sim, Bucky – notably back to work after his accident – diligently monitoring them. Then Gale and Macon take Al Roker through the Gateway modules, explaining how the lunar station will work, the process of getting it set up for future missions, and the experiments they’ll do on it. It’s just like so many other media pieces they do – National Geographic and Discovery Channel and CNN.

At some point that day, Gale is doing an interview with Al, set up in the SVMF with the Orion mock up behind him, when Bucky wanders past again, on his way to Gateway training with the backup crew. There’s a camera close up on Gale, but he looks completely relaxed, the all American pilot in his NASA flightsuit. He’s talking about the damn universe again, like he’s one to do, and he has that genuine look of awe on his face that always seems to draw people in and make them believe what he’s saying, make them want to listen, make them want to keep supporting this endeavor of theirs. It’s exactly why the world fell in love with him.

“It’s amazing, really, that you and I are sitting here right now, talking about flying to the moon,” he says to Al. It’s his favorite thing to say to reporters, and it never fails to charm them. “So many things had to go right, over billions of years, for us to land right here, but we did. I think we’re real lucky to walk this Earth. We look up at those stars, and we see our past and our future, and we just want to know more about them. It’s the same with the moon.”

“How so?” Al asks, a wistful smile on his own face.

Gale’s lips curve into that charming little half smile. “Well, humanity has been fascinated by the moon for as long as we could look up at the sky and see it lookin’ back. It’s the first thing we knew other than our own world, and come to find out, there’s so much we can learn from it, about our planet and our solar system. It tells a whole story that we just have to know how to read…”

He starts to trail off when he spots Bucky, his eyes falling onto him, and his expression shifts from one kind of happiness to another. He forces the rest of his thought out, but he also reaches a hand out to the side. Al turns to see Bucky, and Bucky really doesn’t know if this is allowed, but he goes to his husband anyway. Because Gale asked him to.

“Hey there flyboy,” he says just as he enters the camera shot. He wraps his arms around Gale from behind, kisses him on the cheek. It makes Gale laugh as he grabs onto Bucky’s arm.

“Major Egan,” Al greets, more for the camera than for anything else. “You’re looking good, almost a year after Artemis 3.”

“I’m glad to be back here, Al,” Bucky says, simple.

Thankfully, there’s certain reporters he can usually trust not to turn a story on him, and they’re here to talk about Artemis 4. Not him. Al smoothly moves the interview forward, even if Bucky’s made him improvise. “You’ve been a big part of Artemis 4’s training this year. How does it feel getting your own husband ready to fill your shoes as commander?”

Bucky looks at Gale, and Gale looks right back at him. Bucky isn’t lying when he says, “Gale is the best of us. He’ll make us all proud.”

He doesn’t expect his interview-crashing to make it into the final piece, but it will. It’ll be everywhere, come launch day. Everything from ‘hey there flyboy,’ to that look they share. After all, they’re one of the biggest stories in the world, and that look says everything – starcrossed lovers in a new age, on a new frontier. To hell and back. To the moon and back.

It’s a look that says I’m here with you, I love you, I will come home to you, and that’s all that matters in the end.

—

October 31, 2026 Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

Gale’s eyes are locked on the sim screen as he maintains their trajectory, easing the docking probe on Orion into the drogue on I-Hab. He’s done this countless times by now, ensuring he can manually perform this maneuver if necessary, but there’s nothing like hours and hours of practice to make sure he could do it even if he was nearly incapacitated. “Alright, and we have… docked.”

He waits for the latches to take hold, signifying capture.

“You sure?” Benny asks.

“We’re not seeing it here, Four,” Bucky says over coms.

Gale furrows his brow. “No. I’m backing out and trying again.” Another failure. “Houston, I can’t seem to get a latch on I-Hab.”

Macon: “Go at it faster.”

Benny: “That’s what she said.”

Sandra: “Shut it, Demarco.”

Gale: “...Still no capture.”

Bucky: “Stand by.”

Benny: “...Are we actually standing by? Is there a problem with the sim?”

Bucky: “No, Demarco. Work the problem.”

Gale finds the dripping sass both unnecessary and unhelpful. They’ve been in this thing for too long, trying to dock with Gateway, and Bucky is honestly almost as much of a hardass about training as Gale was for Artemis 3 (key word: almost). He seems to get joy out of throwing difficult scenarios at them, not that Gale can blame him. He’s certain there were moments where Artemis 3 wanted to strangle him, too.

Sandra: “Bucky’s being ornery.”

Macon: “You did that beautifully, Gale. Would’ve been perfect.”

Gale: “That’s a nice sentiment, but do you have anything constructive to add?”

Macon: “That’s a negative, commander.”

Gale: “Well someone better figure it out before Major Egan leaves us stranded in orbit.”

Bucky: “I would never, angel.”

Gale: “Hours of sim records say otherwise.”

Benny: “You’re the one who married him.”

Gale rolls his eyes, keeping his hand locked on the command module controls. He’s never been sure if it’s better or worse to try to separate Bucky Egan, his CAPCOM, from John Egan, his husband, but sometimes he finds himself doing it anyway. If nothing else, it helps him keep the frustration in the sim instead of taking it home.

It only sometimes works.

Gale: “Macon, verify the docking probe circuit breakers.”

Macon: “Verified. We have power.”

Gale: “Well shit. Who has other ideas?”

Gale originally set out trying to get this docking maneuver done using as little fuel as possible, but after a third failed attempt, even with maintaining thrust to give the latches more of a chance, he’ll take any success at all.

They spend quite a long time in their last sim of the day, which was supposed to be quick and easy, checking the probe’s electrical connections and verifying power on different command module systems. The crew is supposed to react to these scenarios as if they were actually happening on a real mission, but damn it, they cannot figure out what the hell Bucky changed in the sim to screw them over. They can’t find anything amiss with the power, no matter how many times they double and triple check. And eventually, they decide that that pretty much leaves one option: a mechanical issue. The latches are cocked, but they’re not releasing when the module makes contact.

They’re in the middle of debating a last-resort plan to do an unplanned EVA and retrieve the drogue for inspection when it hits Gale. During the actual mission, manually extracting the drogue would be an extremely inconvenient maneuver, requiring the entire crew to suit up and open the hatch for Benny or Macon to complete a spacewalk that was not factored into the mission plan or the spacecraft’s lifespan. There’s no telling how long it would take, whether it would be successful, or what other unknowns it might cause.

And that sounds really fucking familiar.

“Alright John,” Gale says. “I think I see what you’re playing at. I’m gonna go again, use the probe for alignment. Demarco, while I hold a plus-X to keep us there, you blow a bottle and try to retract the probe, get it outta the way. We’ll see if we can get any of those latches.”

Benny: “Will that work?”

Gale: “Maybe.”

The rest of the world probably doesn’t want to know just how much of space travel is built on maybe. But more often than not, maybe tends to come through.

Gale’s plan works, in any case. He uses the probe to align the command module with I-Hab, maintaining positive thrust to keep them in position, and Benny blows one of their nitrogen bottles to force the probe to retract. When they have confirmation that the latches are engaged, Macon and Benny high five, but Gale just kind of scoffs. He checks the clock. They’re nearly an hour over time, and he really should’ve figured this out sooner.

When he finally climbs out of the mock-up and strides over to the control center, he puts himself right in front of Bucky, who is still jotting down notes about the session. “You Apollo 14’d me.”

Bucky looks up and smirks at him, no doubt knowing exactly how frustrated Gale is about it. “You know, you’re supposed to know more about NASA history than anyone here. I expected you to figure that out sooner.”

Gale scowls, and Bucky kisses him on the cheek. Then he draws him in for a peck on the lips, trying to break him out of his sulking. It almost works, until Bucky reaches down to grab something out of his bag. “Buck up, Cap. We’re late.”

He presses a blue plastic-y object against Gale’s chest, and Gale grabs it from him. When he realizes what it is, he sighs. The Halloween party. “I’m not wearing the cowl, John.”

“Oh yes you are.”

—

Gale complains the whole time they’re changing into their costumes and again when they make it to the party, where it seems all of JSC has already arrived except for the Artemis 3 and 4 crews. He makes it sound like they stumbled into the Hundred Proof egregiously late all because Bucky pushed the crew a little harder on their last sim of the day. Bucky disagrees. Sure, maybe they should’ve gotten here more than 30 minutes ago, but when they show up fashionably late, they certainly aren’t stumbling. They walk through the doors side by side like fucking badasses, and everyone turns to watch them. Bucky has a cape drifting in his wake, and yeah, he feels like a fucking superhero.

At first it’s a little peculiar. Superman and Captain America. They’re not from the same universe, people might complain. Why didn’t they do a more couple-y couples costume, like Batman and Superman or Captain America and the Winter Soldier? Hell, Bucky’s name is even Bucky.

But then the rest of the Artemis 3 and 4 crews waltz in behind them with all the subtlety of, well, a bunch of overenthusiastic superheroes. Someone might as well be blowing a fan and filming them in slow motion with the way all eyes are on them.

On one side is Artemis 3, the Justice League. Bucky is suited up in a Superman suit that he is, perhaps, a little too proud of. Following close behind, Curt comes in as Batman, scowling at everyone. Then there’s Alex as the Flash, and Rosie as Green Lantern to complete the ensemble.

On the other side, Gale leads the Artemis 4 Avengers as Captain America. He gave in to Bucky’s pleading – see: rolled his eyes and did what his husband asked – and is wearing the cowl, though Bucky doesn’t expect it to stay on for long. On the plus side, Marge helped him devise a way to strap a shield to his back, and Bucky knows that Gale is kind of pleased about how well it turned out. He’s joined by Sandra, looking like she could fuck someone up as Black Widow. Bringing up the rear is Macon as Black Panther, and Benny as Thor, swinging a fake hammer around in a surprisingly coordinated manner.

…Until he knocks over someone’s glass, and Gale – a true hero – catches it mid-air before it hits the ground.

Bucky is perfectly fine letting everyone in this bar think that the superhero idea originated with efforts to come up with team costumes. They don’t have to know what really happened, which is that Bucky was jealous of the new Superman.

That’s what Gale says, at least.

The original plan was for Sandra to dress up as Barbie, and for the men of both Artemis crews to dress up as different versions of Ken. They were going to have signs that said “This Ken’s job is…” followed by something stupid that the others would decide. “This Ken’s job is complaining,” “This Ken’s job is doing math so we don’t have to,” “This Ken’s job is dancing on tables,” “This Ken’s job is silently judging you,” “This Ken’s job is making sure the other Ken’s don’t die.”

Bucky was a fan of his sign saying “This Ken’s job is almost dying that one time,” but Gale vetoed it, and no one was too intent on pushing Gale Cleven on a joke about his husband kicking the bucket, including his husband.

That whole thing went by the wayside anyway, about a month ago, though Bucky is hoping they’ll revive it for next year. He and Gale were watching the 2025 Superman on a rare night that they were both home early enough for a movie, and about halfway through, Bucky could no longer ignore the way Gale had been staring at the new Clark Kent, pretty much since the very first scene.

Gale Cleven doesn’t often thirst over guys who aren’t Bucky. But there he was, fantasizing about Superman even though Bucky was sitting right beside him.

“He’s cute, John. What do you want me to say?” Gale laughed when he pointed it out. Gale would say that Bucky was pouting, but Bucky won’t admit to that, because he was totally not jealous. Not at all.

Bucky’s never been jealous in his life, some might say. No shot. What a silly thing to accuse him of.

“Oh come on, darling,” Gale said, pausing the movie. Abandoning his new crush, he shifted over on the couch to sit right in Bucky’s lap, hands on his shoulders. “You know I already found my Superman.”

And no, that didn’t make Bucky feel any sort of way at all. At all. But long story short, that was the moment the new costume idea was set into motion. Bucky would dress up as Superman, just to remind Gale of who he should be staring at. Gale, meanwhile, would dress up as Captain America at Bucky’s request.

“They’re from different franchises,” Gale complained. Bucky didn’t care. If Gale was getting his little fantasy, then Bucky wanted to get his, too. He wanted to see his husband looking hot in the Captain America suit, fulfilling all of his childhood dreams.

So, this was the solution. Artemis 4 as the Avengers, and Artemis 3 as the Justice League.

The crews fold themselves right into the party, grabbing drinks and getting started with the typical questionable decisions. The bar is packed and loud, with an eclectic mix of music over the speakers and people dancing or playing pool or shouting to be heard over the crowd. Bucky’s a little disoriented the moment they walk in, and he’s worried all of it might trigger a headache. It’s not lost on him that, apparently, a lingering side effect of Shackleton is that he’s temporarily lost his endurance for partying. Like he’s old now or some shit.

How boring.

But he’s almost certain that Gale won’t want to hang out for too long anyway, so he decides just to have some fun and have a drink.

By the time he makes his way over to the bar, leaving Gale to go mingle, Curt is already flirting with Jackie, an empty shot glass in front of him. “You’re gonna have to forget about me, Biddick,” Jackie says with a teasing grin. She gives him another shot and tells him to go be an idiot somewhere else.

He throws back the shot and grins right back. “How could I ever forget about you?”

He tends to come on to her every once in a while, and Bucky can no longer tell if it’s legitimate or if it’s just a long-standing joke between them. By the end of the night, he’ll probably have made out with one of the guys in engineering and charmed one of the new girls in admin anyway. At minimum.

“Superman!” Curt exclaims when he sees Bucky come up beside him. He wraps an arm around his shoulder and leans in. “Get a drink. Then it’s you and me against Rosie and Alex. Darts, okay?”

“That never ends well,” Bucky chuckles. Jackie also has candy bowls scattered around the place for Halloween, including a couple at the bar. He reaches into one for a Twix, tearing the wrapper off.

Curt snags the chocolate from Bucky’s hand and takes a bite before giving it back. “For us or for everyone else?”

“Definitely for everyone else,” Jackie butts in. But she won’t stop them. At least, not yet. Eventually, they’ll do something stupid and she’ll have to put the darts behind the counter for the night, but said night is still young. She slides a drink across the bar top to Bucky, even though he didn’t order anything.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“Halloween special.” And that’s all the information he gets, apparently. He polishes off the chocolate and takes a sip. It tastes good, whatever the fuck it is.

By the time he extracts himself from the chaos of his own crew, he’s up two games and almost done with his second glass. He decides to leave while he’s ahead – to Curt’s dismay – to go socialize, or maybe find somewhere to sit down. The headache he was afraid of is starting to come on quick, nagging at the back of his skull.

He’s laughing, waving off his friends’ attempts to go another round, when a flash of light from a camera somewhere nearby makes his ears ring.

He blinks, feeling a little unsteady as his vision gets darker around the edges, but he waves away his crew to go keep making fools of themselves and starts making his way through the crowd. It feels louder than before, and he feels too warm, sweat pricking his skin beneath the Superman suit.

Another flash has him closing his eyes.

He can feel his heartbeat. It’s pounding in his head, hammering in his chest. Behind closed eyelids he sees chaos around him, tumbling end over end over end…

He blinks.

“You okay, man?” someone asks, putting a steadying hand on Bucky’s shoulder. One of the flight controllers.

Bucky nods, pats the guy on the back as he brushes by with a quick “yeah, thanks” and something about too much to drink. It’s bullshit, but it’s believable.

He focuses on breathing, long and deep, as he wades through the crowd. He fidgets with his cape to keep his hands from shaking, and he tosses an easy smile to a few people as he brushes by, exchanging compliments on their halloween costumes.

It grounds him, reminding him of where he is… and where he isn’t. Little by little, his heart rate starts to slow back to normal, or something resembling it.

After what feels like far too long of a journey, he finds Marge by the pool table, leaning back against the window with a drink in hand. She’s dressed like a witch, with a hat, black dress, fishnets, and tall black boots. She looks fucking hot, and Bucky hopes Benny tells her that at some point tonight. In any case, he takes it upon himself to make sure she knows.

“Fuck, Marge, you’re setting this place on fire.”

She laughs and reaches out a hand. He takes it and kisses it dramatically before leaning back against the wall beside her. “Ain’t too bad yourself, Superman,” she says, looking him up and down.

Over here in the back of the bar, where there’s a cool draft from the window and less of a crowd, Bucky feels like he can think straight again, and he takes some time to simply exist quietly beside his friend. He rolls out his neck and rests his head back against the chilled window glass. For her credit, Marge doesn’t fuss over him, even though Bucky’s certain she can tell he’s working through something. Instead, she just grabs him a glass of water, and then she talks, catches him up on all the gossip she’s learned tonight.

From here, they have an excellent view of almost everything happening in the whole bar. Rosie has started up a billiards game with Macon. Croz is dancing with Sandra somewhere in the middle of the crowd – for old times’ sake. People are drinking and doing shots and laughing at bad jokes all around them, putting the pressure of their jobs out of mind for a night.

Since Bucky’s departure, there's been an increasingly drunk game of darts involving a rotating cast of crew members and flight controllers. He wonders if the relationship between number of drinks consumed and number of darts that miss the board is linear or exponential. Either way, it will get the darts confiscated by Jackie at any moment now.

Meanwhile, Curt, in true fashion, is dancing on a table, using the hammer from Benny’s costume as a microphone to sing along to Check Yes, Juliet. As Bucky expected, he has a guy up there with him, and they’ll no doubt be making out by the end of the song.

“I see you found your Captain America,” Marge observes, bringing Bucky’s attention back to their conversation.

He follows her gaze across the room to Gale, leaning against the bar and laughing about something with Helen and Benny. There’s an empty glass beside him, along with a few candy wrappers. The cowl, meanwhile, has been discarded and forgotten somewhere around here, leaving his hair half-gelled back and a little messy, but he looks damn good in that suit.

America’s ass, Bucky thinks to himself. It makes him giggle, but that might also be the alcohol.

“I guess I did,” he muses. He nearly forgot he told Marge about his little childhood crush, earlier this year when he was still essentially immobile and she was keeping him company one evening. He glances over when he feels her eyes on him, and she’s giving him this all-knowing, sisterly type of look that means she’s been blessed with some truth about the universe. “What?” he asks.

Marge tilts her head at him fondly. With a gentle smile, she rubs a hand over his shoulder, taking in his costume, and tugs at the fabric of his cape. Motioning her head toward Gale, she adds, “He found his Superman.”

Bucky doesn’t know if it’s the drinks or the dizzy chaos of a crowded party or just a really, really long year, but that makes his stomach flutter in a weird way. John Egan has never been particularly humble. He’s always liked the idea of being a hero, someone who did amazing things, someone who people could look up to. And he made it, even if he’s not sure how or if he deserves it. But it’s different, being that for an amorphous public, and being told you are that for one single, special person.

It’s not like he isn’t aware of how much he and Gale have always done for each other, but he’s never thought about it like that. And with everything since Artemis 3… sometimes he can’t help but feel guilty for how much he’s been draining his own husband. “Yeah?” he asks, weirdly self-conscious all of a sudden.

Marge nods. “Yeah.”

A few minutes later, Bucky’s still thinking about that when Gale finds them by the pool table. “I forgot my laptop at the Center,” he complains, grabbing Bucky’s hand and standing in front of him like he’s waiting for him to solve this problem somehow.

Bucky doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do about that, but he takes a sip from his glass of water and squints at his husband. They’ve been here for a long time now, and he’s showing none of the usual signs of being tired of the socialization or the antics of their friends. His cheeks are a little pink, his eyes bright.

“Are you tipsy?” Bucky asks, his voice so shocked that it nearly makes Marge spit out her drink laughing. Gale just shrugs. Bucky can barely remember the last time he saw his husband have more than a single drink. “Benny convinced you to have whatever Jackie’s making over there, huh?”

“Just a little.” Gale shrugs again and leans some of his weight against Bucky. “Why not?”

Bucky wraps a protective arm around Gale and cranes his head over the crowd, spotting Benny with one of the drinks in question. “Demarco! Stop stripping my wife of his innocence!”

Benny flips him off, yelling back, “I’m pretty sure you did it first!”

Bucky ignores him and turns back to Marge, motioning to Gale. “How often does Buck Cleven get tipsy?” It’s not unheard of. After all, he hasn’t made it to drunk – now that, people would pay to see. But it’s not often that golden boy Buck Cleven joins them mere mortals for this most human experience.

Marge chuckles. She should know; she’s known him longer than anyone. “Could definitely count it on two hands.”

Gale nods in agreement as he brushes his fingers over the single perfect curl hanging over Bucky’s forehead, completely enamored with it. “One and a half.”

Bucky stares at him. “You fucking boyscout.” He would find that kind of annoying with most people, all holier-than-thou and all that. But with Gale it’s just endearing.

Gale gives him a reprimanding sort of look, and his fingers move down to rub over the red fabric of Bucky’s cape. “Hate to break it to you, Superman,” he says, pressing a hand against Bucky’s chest and leaning in for a kiss. “For tonight, people call you a boyscout, too.”

“New ship unlocked,” Marge quips beside them. She downs the rest of her drink and sets the glass on the side of the pool table, to Rosie’s dismay. Bucky kisses Gale again, letting himself forget about the headache and the noise. There’s a flash as someone, somewhere, takes a picture of Captain America and Superman in the back of a bar. It might be Marge, or Rosie, or any number of their friends, but Bucky doesn’t really care. His ears aren’t ringing anymore, and he can taste the alcohol on Gale’s lips. It’s not a usual experience, but it’s not a bad one, either.

“SuperCap?” Marge wonders. “Super America? Captain Kent?”

Distantly, Bucky hears Macon say “I vote SuperCap” as he strikes the cue ball.

Finally, Bucky pulls away, opting to ignore the teasing around them. “So you left your laptop in your office?” He asks. “Can’t you get it tomorrow?”

Gale shakes his head. “Not goin’ to the Center tomorrow. Offsite training.”

“Stop by for it.”

“No. I wanna get it tonight.”

Bucky sighs. “Well then one of us better sober the fuck up.”

For once, turns out, that person is Bucky. He’s not sure how in hell that happened, but eventually they manage to slip out of the Hundred Proof, and he drives them the short distance back to JSC.

It’s not often that they’re here when it’s nearly deserted. The entire Artemis team, at least, is at the bar, where they’ll stay until probably far too late. Across the quad from their office building, the Mission Control Center will be the most lively building on campus right now, with a group of flight controllers always on shift for the ISS. But the astronaut offices are empty.

As they wander inside, Gale grabs Bucky’s hand, dragging him along. They run through the halls, giggling like kids who broke in somewhere they’re not supposed to be. Bucky can’t help but think about the stories these walls could tell. They’ve seen greatness and heartbreak, stupidity and tomfoolery, generations of men and women taking strides toward greatness.

In the grand scheme of their lives, NASA has only been a fraction of it. But for Bucky, he knows it was always where he was meant to be. This building, this campus, this city was always where he was meant to be. And for all Gale’s hesitation about giving it a shot so many years ago, in the end, he’s turned into this quintessential American astronaut.

He waxes poetic about the universe on live TV, and people lean in to listen. They fawn over him wherever he goes, let him charm them with that easy drawl and winning smile. He’s one of the best astronauts they have, made for the job through and through.

People look to them for inspiration, for guiding words on space travel and the future of humanity. Kids hang pictures of them on their bedroom walls, dreaming of walking on the moon one day. People root for them. People hope for them. People cry with them and celebrate with them.

JSC may only be the latest phase in their lives, but Bucky has never had a doubt that it’s where they belong.

He can just look at these walls, at the photos of missions past, candids and portraits of astronauts, memorabilia from every phase of the space program from Mercury to Artemis, and he knows that it’s not just a job. It’s their home.

There’s even a few scattered photos of John and Gale, because they’ve become engrained in this sacred family, too. There’s Gale floating upside down in the Space Station cupola with the curve of the Earth behind him. John in his EVA suit, standing on the moon next to Starship. Gale and Helen in the cockpit of a T-38. The Artemis 3 crew, laughing about something as they walk out of the crew quarters the morning of launch.

Bucky stops in front of the picture of Gale on the ISS, tugging back on his husband’s hand. “This is one of my favorite pictures of you.”

Gale looks at the photograph for a moment. “Seems like every picture of me is your favorite picture of me.”

“That’s ‘cause they are,” Bucky laughs.

“Then they ain’t really your favorite,” Gale argues.

Bucky grins and turns toward Gale. “If I say they’re all my favorite,” he says, “then they’re all my favorite.”

“Is that right?” Gale asks, looking at Bucky with something akin to amusement on his face.

Bucky smiles, lifting a hand to brush his fingers over Gale’s cheek. He nods. “That’s right.”

What Bucky doesn’t expect is firm, strong hands to find their way to his chest, pushing him back against the wall, soft lips on his. His head is right beside the photograph, and for just a moment he’s worried about knocking it down, but he closes his eyes and the thought is gone. There’s nothing but hands rubbing over his shoulders, Gale’s nose bumping against his. Bucky’s so taken aback that he doesn’t really know what to do, so he just kisses back, roughly wrapping his fingers in Gale’s hair.

Gale braces one hand against the wall beside Bucky and cups the side of his face with the other, holding him there. The taste of liquor is fading, but Bucky can still taste the sweet bitterness of it on Gale’s lips. It’s not like Gale to be so bold – not in a public place – and Bucky’s pleasantly surprised by it. There’s just something about the quiet isolation of the Center at night.

“All of them?” Gale asks when he eventually pulls away, leaving that damned hand against the wall right by Bucky’s head. It makes Bucky feel drunk even though he isn’t, his heart beating fast.

“All of them,” he insists. “Because they’re all you.” And he really does mean that.

Gale’s biting his lower lip, staring at Bucky like he doesn’t know what to do but he wants to do all of it, whatever it is. There’s cameras in the hallways, though, and they really don’t need security seeing whatever’s about to happen.

“Come on,” Bucky says. He takes Gale’s hand, and they run off down the hall once again.

When they reach Gale’s office, Gale pulls him through the door and right back into a deep kiss, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s neck. “I thought we were here for your laptop,” Bucky whispers against his lips.

“What’s the rush?”

Another kiss. Bucky chuckles, running his hands over the rough fabric of the Captain America costume, down to Gale’s hips. “None at all.” He fumbles around behind him to push the door closed, only for Gale to press him against it. “Someone’s feeling strong,” Bucky pants. “The suit’s goin’ to your head.”

“You like it,” Gale breathes, biting gently at Bucky’s bottom lip. He presses a kiss to the side of his mouth, moves down to his jaw. He presses closer and slips a hand beneath Bucky’s cape, trailing his fingers down to the base of his spine. Bucky’s trying to think of some retort, when a hand grabs his ass and makes him yelp, and that’s it… he needs to find some control here.

He pushes away from the door, coaxing Gale backward toward the desk in the middle of the room. He reaches around to push a few knickknacks to the side, and in one smooth motion that has him feeling like Superman after all, he lifts Gale off the ground and sets him right on top of the desk. Gale spreads his legs so his knees are bracketing Bucky’s hips, letting Bucky press close to him again.

“I like this look on you,” Gale says between kisses. He wraps up his fist in the fabric of the cape, his other arm draped over Bucky’s shoulder. He pulls back to look at him again, like he’s a painting he wants to memorize, and he nods. “I really like this look on you.”

“More than you like it on David Corenswet?” Bucky asks. He tries to pass it off as teasing, but a certain little bit of a growl in his throat gives him away as he presses a kiss to the base of Gale’s ear.

“Oh darling,” Gale breathes, shaking his head. “That’s never been a question.”

Bucky smirks in satisfaction as he sets to work on Gale’s neck, nipping at sensitive skin. “Damn right,” he mutters.

“So humble.”

Bucky would really, really like to mark Gale up a little bit, leave a nice little bruise, but he knows he won’t be too thrilled about that in the morning. So he goes gentle, and he doesn’t complain when Gale presses a hand to his cheek, guiding him back up to his mouth.

“It’s unfair how perfect you look,” Bucky says in return.

“Oh yeah?” Gale leans back on his hands to give Bucky a good view of him in the suit. He might not be any Chris Evans, but Bucky thinks he’s even better. Not to mention, he’s in better shape for Artemis than he’s been since they first entered the Air Force. “Does it live up to all your wildest dreams?”

Bucky would frown if he wasn’t so turned on by Captain fucking America seated on top of this desk and just asking him to do as he pleases. “Marge told you,” he deadpans.

“Sure did,” Gale says, like a challenge, lifting his chin and giving Bucky this weirdly daring and seductive look that, Bucky hates to admit, works like a charm.

He drags Gale back to him, yanking him forward so he’s right on the edge of the desk, their bodies pressed as close together as possible. It makes Gale gasp so prettily, and Bucky swallows it between his lips. He wants his hands all over Gale. He wants to feel every part of him. He wants to live in this heady feeling that comes with Gale’s fingers tangled in his hair, or clutching at his shoulder, or roaming over his chest and sides. The shape of Gale’s body moving against his is intoxicating, gentle teeth biting at his lip, warm breath on his cheek. Bucky’s face feels hot with the exhilaration.

Turns out a superhero suit is not the most comfortable thing to have a hard-on in, but he’s overwhelmed with the need for more. More contact. More Gale. More everything.

Then there’s soft lips on his neck, the sharp, sweet nip of teeth. Gale’s hand is on his ass again, pulling him close. Bucky’s thinking through the logistics of getting these damn suits off as he puts his hands under Gale’s legs and lifts him again, strong arms wrapped tight around his neck for support.

But as he pulls Gale off the desk, a stack of papers slips off with him, fluttering to the office floor. “Fuck, sorry,” Bucky mutters, watching them land in a scattered mess around his feet.

Gale chuckles and rests his forehead against Bucky’s temple. “One day we’ll learn.”

“We can keep going,” Bucky suggests.

Gale shakes his head, squirming out of Bucky’s hold so he’s on his own two feet again. “I don’t know about you, but this get up is better removed in a more private space,” he says, motioning up and down at himself. Bucky can’t disagree. Would he have made do? Definitely. Would he rather do it in their bedroom? Also definitely.

Squatting down, cape pooling on the floor around his feet, Bucky starts trying to gather up the papers. They’re mostly things like geology terminology reviews, Orion and Starship schematics, the Artemis training schedule, a couple sticky notes from Bucky. “What’d’ya say we get your laptop and head home?” he says as he straightens up the stack.

He glances over at Gale, who’s on his knees on the floor beside him. But he’s staring straight down at a sticky note clutched between his fingertips. It’s not one that Bucky left. It’s the wrong color, and the handwriting is far too neat. More likely a note from one of the secretaries.

“What’s that?” Bucky asks.

“Uh…” Gale blinks down at it and shakes his head. “I don’t…” Bucky watches him clench his jaw uncomfortably, and then he just hands the note over.

Bucky’s eyes go wide when he reads it, and all of the electricity that was just buzzing between them sizzles out. All he can think now is, fuck.

There’s a phone number scrawled across the bottom. And above it: “10/31 4:30PM. Call from James Cleven.”

“Your dad,” Bucky whispers.

Gale nods, shrugging half-heartedly like he has no idea how he’s supposed to feel about it. “My dad.”

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