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Soon You'll Get Better - Part 4: "Still Here"

From the Clegan Astronaut AU

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Fic Summary: Scenes from Bucky's healing process, taking place between Artemis 3 splashdown and the epilogue of To the Moon and Back, filling in pieces of Gale and John’s lives as they navigate the aftermath of what happened at Shackleton. Mostly for all your clegan astronaut hurt/comfort needs.

Author's Note: Gale needs a hug. He may or may not accept one, but he needs it anyway. But also, the walk scene that I promised :) Sorry it's been a minute. Yay for health problems...

---

“Just make sure you give the office a call and they’ll set you up for after the holiday. They’re expecting you. Do you still have that referral?”

“Yeah, yeah of course.”

Gale’s a fucking liar, apparently.

So what if he’s barely slept in two or three days? And so what if he hasn’t had much of a proper meal since yesterday afternoon? So what if he feels like he’s unraveling?

He’s not. He can’t. So he’s not.

Bucky’s appointment this morning went well. They’d had to reschedule with the neurologist because he had a bad night a few days ago, and really last night was another tough one, but they made it out the door this morning. They made it, and so far, today has gone to plan. The doctor was very happy with Bucky’s progress since leaving the hospital, and that’s all that matters. All that matters is that John is healing, and he’s here, and he’s going to be okay.

Gale can handle it, really. He can handle taking care of his husband and working him through the panic and the fog and the pain in the middle of the night and keeping track of his meds and his food and his water intake. He can handle helping him get around the house and taking him to appointments, sitting in waiting rooms and filling out paperwork and trying to keep track of every little thing. He can handle keeping up with work – meetings and press and protocols – no matter how many times Chick tries to not so subtly check in and ask if he needs more time.

“It’s okay, Gale,” he tells him. “I’m here for you. We all are. No need to rush back.”

Except, when it comes down to it, that’s not true, and Gale knows better than anyone else that that’s not true. When it comes down to it, this is NASA they’re talking about. When it comes down to it, there’s still so much left to do to debrief from Artemis 3, and Gale knows the mission better than anyone else in Mission Control. And, when it comes down to it, he’s the commander of Artemis 4, and there’s a hell of a lot left to do as they stare down the barrel at a late 2026 launch date. He’ll be damned if he’s the reason it doesn’t stay on schedule.

He’s fine. He has to be. So he is.

Bucky’s in the living room right now with Pepper, some orange juice, and some daytime game show on tv, hopefully drifting off to sleep after a very active start to the day. He’s been in a good mood this morning, or at least better than yesterday. A bit quiet, sure. A bit foggy. He even cracked a joke to the doctor, flashed him that cocky grin.

He’s fine, so Gale is fine.

If only he could find the CT scan referral that he told the doctor he still had, because why on earth would he not still have it? He meticulously files every medical form and record for both himself and Bucky, has as long as they’ve lived together. They’re all right here in the filing cabinet next to his desk in the office, sorted into folders and arranged in alphabetical order. The doctor handed him the printed form – with the name of the recommended practice and the doctor’s signature and everything – while Bucky was still in the hospital. Gale is sure that he came home and put it into the filing cabinet, straight into the folder labeled “John Medical 2023-2025.”

So why isn’t it here?

He’s barely stepped foot in this office since Artemis 3 began its voyage, so there’s no opportunity for anything to get shuffled around. It should be wherever he left it the day he brought Bucky home from the hospital. He’s torn through his work bag and Bucky’s hospital bag to no avail. He’s scattered the papers that were laying on his desk, sifting through mission protocols, press statement drafts, technical drawings, and little sticky notes from his husband that have been left around the house or his JSC office through the years.

“Love you angel” and “Have a good week, will be home Friday,” and “Will you go out with me? Check Yes or No.” All in different colors and different stages of wear, but all in John’s lopsided scrawl – a little messy, like he’s writing in a hurry, like he’s already halfway to the next word or the next thing he has to do.

The notes are the thing that make Gale pause in his frantic search. He even smiles when he finds a crappy cartoon sketch of a rocket on a light pink sticky note that he knows Bucky stole from Marge’s office. Stuck to the back of it is a purple sticky note – also from Marge – that says “I love you to the moon and back.” They appeared together on Gale’s desk the day John left for quarantine, for him to find when he came home after that last goodbye, walking alone through an empty house. Gale picks up those two notes and sticks them tidily along the back of his desk where he can see them, tucked between a small brass model of an F18 flight formation and a photograph of him and John with the Orion mock-up.

To the moon and back.

Gale runs his thumb over the words. They were always a promise. One that was dangerous to make, but one that John kept anyway.

Gale sighs and steps back. With the left side of his desk now in disarray, he rubs his jaw and looks helplessly around the room, as if the medals and photographs and aircraft sketches displayed on the walls will somehow give him an answer. Years of flight together, stretching from this very moment all the way back to when they were just kids. This office is a time capsule of sorts, past and present swirling around Gale in a way that doesn’t quite make sense.

To the left of one of the windows is a display case that holds medals and awards, their astronaut and ASCAN pins, challenge coins from their missions, and whatever else felt right to put in there. And between the window and the case, there’s a series of framed photos hung one above the other, no real rhyme or reason to them. There’s this picture of Bucky when he was younger, way back at their USAF Drop Night when they were just student pilots, waiting in anticipation for their first aircraft assignment. His hair is slicked back, with that one wayward curl threatening to fall over his forehead. He looks fucking ecstatic, mid- celebratory jump with his fist pumping in the air and a picture of an F-22 Raptor on the screen behind him. Gale is sure he was drinking a bit, and he looks so damn young, just right at the precipice of their career. If only he knew what was coming.

If only he knew how amazing their life would be.

If only he knew he’d end up here.

How does that night feel so long ago and like just yesterday? How did they get here? Married, decorated officers, NASA astronauts. Neither of them could have possibly guessed… and yet, Gale knows that Bucky did. He knows that this, really, was Bucky’s plan all along, and Gale was the one that couldn’t dream big enough to believe it.

He looks at that photograph on the wall, and suddenly his heart hurts so bad with how young Bucky looks, before everything. Before this. Standing, walking, grinning, drinking, laughing, celebrating. No cares or worries, just wild child Bucky Egan. That’s how Gale met him. That’s how he’s always been. That’s how he was always supposed to be. But now here he is, needing a follow-up CT scan after a TBI, hurt and depressed and unable to walk, staring at a future that no one can guarantee. And here Gale is, searching frantically for the referral for that CT scan and willing himself not to punch the wall, because his husband is out on the couch trying to make sense of life in the aftermath, but there he is in that photograph looking so damn young.

Don’t count on it, they always say.

Don’t count on it, don’t count on it, don’t count on it-

Gale has to force himself to breathe.

He wants to reach out to that version of Bucky. He wants to see the way he smiles without a care in the world. He wants to hug him tight and tell him how amazing he’s gonna be.

He wants to tell him he’s sorry. He wants to tell him that they’ll be okay.

It’s bad, Buck…

Breathe.

His husband is in the living room. He’s right there. Gale has him. He’s still here. He still smiles like that, on a good day. He’ll always smile like that because he’s him. He’s here. He needs a CT scan. It’s Gale’s responsibility.

We aren’t sure he’ll survive…

His chest burns.

If I die, make sure I get the whole nine yards.

He needs that referral. He needs to find it.

But here he is, flipping and flipping through every file in John’s medical folders, even the old ones, and he checks through his own, too, just in case. It’s not there. It’s fucking nowhere, and when did Gale Cleven become a person who misplaces important things like that?

He’s biting down on his lip so hard he tastes blood, and his fingers are starting to get unsteady as he flips through paper after paper because it has to be here somewhere.

If I die-

As a kid, Gale would’ve gotten a beating for losing important paperwork. As a soldier, he’d hardly fare better. Gale Cleven had an immaculate system for organizing files when his schoolmates were still shoving their vocabulary homework haphazardly into green dinosaur folders. He does not lose things. He doesn’t-

He can’t-

He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.

Don’t cry for me, angel.

He steps back too quickly from the filing cabinet, watching the room spin in a way that makes him feel sick.

Breathe.

When his vision stabilizes, he stares determinedly at the manila folders lining the open drawer from front to back, each one labeled in neat script. It’s not a big deal, he tries to tell himself. It’s not that big of a deal. He can just call the doctor, right? Just request a new copy, because losing track of a referral in a very chaotic time isn’t that odd, right? In the last week and a half he’s brought Bucky home, scheduled and rescheduled appointments for the neurologist, the occupational therapist, and the orthopedic surgeon, shuffled Bucky from doctor to doctor, and tried his damn best to hold both of them together. Losing one little piece of paper is forgivable. It’s not a big deal.

It’s not a big deal, so why do his eyes feel wet and why can’t he get his pulse to slow down again? It’s not a big deal, so why does he suddenly feel so goddamn small in the middle of his own home office, like the walls of this beautiful, terrible time capsule are growing around him and he’s three feet tall again? It’s not a big deal, so why is there a lump in his throat and why does his skin feel too tight?

Breathe.

He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, breathes harshly through his nose because he hates that he feels like this. But it creeps in anyway. He’s a goddamn adult, so why does he feel like he can’t keep his shit together? Why does he feel like he needs someone to guide him, to tell him what to do and when to do it? Why does he feel so overwhelmed and unprepared, like a little kid with too much on his shoulders?

Why does he – calm, cool, collected Buck Cleven – feel like he needs his mother?

All these years, and he still wishes she were here. He still closes his eyes and sees her kind face in the morning sun. He still wishes he could feel her arms around him and smell her perfume. He wishes she’d tell him that everything’s okay.

Hell, a small part of him – that naive little boy trapped in the recesses of his heart – would even take his father. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d get a pat on the shoulder, some words telling him he’ll make it through this because he’s a Cleven and Clevens are strong. Or, worst case, it would give him something different to be afraid of, just for a little while.

“Good for nothing idiot,” his dad would call him right now, smacking the back of his head just hard enough to hurt. At least if his father were here, Gale would feel something other than… whatever this is. This sadness. This crippling dread.

More than anything, though, as his breath catches in his lungs and he feels his throat and eyes burn, Gale realizes that he misses Mr. and Mrs. Egan. Of course he couldn’t help but think about them on the nights he spent sitting in the dark lonely silence of their son’s hospital room, but it hurt too much, then, when they were still stuck in the middle of John’s life and death. Now, for the first time since this whole mess began, Gale lets that thought take shape, becoming something more than a half-formed plea that he shoves down into his too-tight chest.

He wishes they were here.

God fucking dammit, he wishes they were here.

They’d know what to do. They’d know how to handle this. All of it. They’d do a better job than Gale, at least.

That’s what parents are for, right? They help hold you up when you’re worried you can’t stand on your own anymore. They help you get through the hard stuff when the world is falling apart around you. They show you how to keep going when you’d rather just sit right down on the ground and let everything burn.

They would be here right now, in this house. They would be here for John, their son, one hundred percent. They would hug him tight every day, and they would tell him that they loved him and how proud they are of everything he’s done, everything he just did, everything he’s doing now.

They would always know exactly what he needs. They’d make sure the fridge was stocked with juice and soup and whatever else Bucky wanted, not the way Gale ran out of orange juice a few days ago and had to beg Benny to pick some up. They’d know what Bucky needed even when he couldn’t communicate it. They’d know what questions to ask the doctors and they’d know every member of Bucky’s care team by name within a day. They’d know how to deal with all the paperwork, and their hands wouldn’t shake when they filled out all the medical forms. They’d know Bucky’s recovery plan by heart, and they’d keep all the medical files organized instead of losing track of them like Gale seems to have done.

They’d know what to say when nothing feels right. They’d know what to do when everything is just hanging on by a thread.

And if they were here, they’d make sure Gale wasn’t alone. They’d wrap him up in their arms and they’d let him cry no matter how much it embarrassed him. They’d help him keep track of the appointments and the meds and the treatment options. They’d help him understand all the medical jargon the doctors keep throwing at him when his brain feels like mush and he can’t stay above water. They’d make sure he ate right and that he drank enough water and got enough sleep. They’d tell him that he’s doing a great job and that Bucky will be okay. They’d reassure him that he won’t spend the rest of his life with this ring on his finger feeling like, somehow, they’d only just begun.

They’d tell him they love him. And he would know they meant it. They always meant it.

But they’re gone, now. Have been for a while, so it really shouldn’t hit this hard. Not now.

Everything hurts more than it should, though, and suddenly Gale is so unfathomably angry at this universe that he loves. He is so goddamn angry, because John's parents should be here. They should be here.

And Gale will move mountains for his husband. He will break the world and he will build it again. But nothing he does will bring them back. Nothing he does will fill that hole, and they’ve had a few years to cope with that loss but not once – not once – has it hurt quite as much as it does right now.

Breathe, angel.

Gale’s jaw hurts from how much he’s clenching it, and he curls his fists tight, fighting the urge to break something, anything, because he is so exhausted from trying to hold himself together. He feels so stupid, sitting here wishing for an adult to tell him what to do like he isn’t a married military man who has flown in fucking space. But he’s grasping at straws, and his head feels heavy and dizzy and he feels like he’s losing it.

He thinks about calling Chick. Chick would know what to do. Chick always knows what to do.

Stop it, Gale, he reprimands himself. Stop it. Chick’s done enough.

He runs a hand through his hair, where sweat is starting to gather on his forehead. It’s unseasonably warm in Houston, and his face feels hot. Squeezing his eyes shut, he lets out a long, long breath and holds it. Counts all the way to twenty when ten isn’t enough. He breathes again.

He made a new folder for their filing cabinet when John came home. “John A3 Recovery,” not “John Medical.” That has to be where he put it. It has to be. If only that folder were in its proper place.

He looks down at his clenched fist, and across his pale skin he can see a scar from the mirror glass that shattered into his hand weeks ago. He uncurls his fingers slowly, watching the way the scar warps as his skin tightens or relaxes.

Breathe.

Carefully, he closes the filing cabinet drawer and opens the one below it. He shuffles through its contents until finally, near the back, he finds the correct folder shoved in somewhere near Pepper’s vet records. Who the hell knows what was going on in his exhausted, coffee-fueled brain to make him misplace it like that, but there it is. And when he opens it, the referral is right on top. Relief hits him so hard that he has to sit down on the desk.

“Idiot,” he mutters to himself as his head clears and his heart calms down. He’s a goddamn astronaut, and he worked himself up about losing a piece of paper.

Rosie would chalk it up to a hard childhood, holding himself to too high a standard, extreme stress, and a lack of rest. “Get some goddamn sleep, Gale,” he’d say.

Gale just takes another deep breath and pulls out his phone to dial the number at the top of the referral.

As he listens to the hold music, he rubs his hand over his face, rakes his fingers through his hair, tries to steady himself again. Bucky calls out to him from the living room. “Buck?” His already weak voice gets choked by a cough that makes Gale wince. “Y-you okay?”

Gale swallows, wiping at his eyes. He hopes they aren’t red. Bucky doesn’t need to see that, doesn’t need to worry. “Yeah, darlin’. Just callin’ for your CT scan.”

“Wanna go on a walk after?”

Gale freezes, surprised by the request after Bucky’s reluctance to go out the last couple days. His head was killing him all night, and Gale was sure today would be another lost cause. He stayed up with Bucky, who was nearly crying from the pain, holding him close and stroking his hair and talking to him softly until enough time had passed for another dose of pain meds.

“Just want it to stop, Buck,” John had whimpered against his shoulder somewhere around 2am. And all Gale could do was kiss the top of his head and say “I know, darling, I know,” wishing he could take all the pain away. The neurologist this morning said the headaches are normal, that they’ll probably keep happening for a while, that all they can do is manage the pain and try to avoid too many triggers. Gale supposes it’s somewhat of a relief every time he hears a doctor tell them that some symptom or another is normal, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

As Gale waits on hold, he glances out the window at the sun shining outside. The clouds from this morning finally cleared up, and the day is bright and warm.

“Buck?” Bucky calls out again.

Gale nods to himself, tapping his fingers on his knee. “Sure, hon,” he calls back. “We can do that.”

—

Gale has loved this neighborhood since they first drove into it years ago to visit Benny, passing by the For Sale sign stuck in the lawn of their future house on the way. He remembers the sign catching his eye, drawing him to the little ranch style home as he stared out the window from the passenger seat. He remembers grabbing Bucky’s shoulder and pointing it out to him.

“We’ll add it to the list,” Bucky told him. But Gale knew, this was where he wanted to be.

He’s jumped around throughout his life. He’s lived in peaceful places, and in sketchy ones. Crowded ones and empty ones. He’s lived with dozens of other guys, and he’s lived on his own, fending for himself. But when they moved down to the Houston area, he knew exactly what he wanted.

He wanted the quaint little home on a quiet street, close enough to the Center to make the late nights and early mornings a little easier, but calm enough that he could catch his breath. Something near the water, where he could go on morning runs as the birds started singing the world awake. He wanted a yard for a dog and a quiet, friendly community that he could count on but that wouldn’t bother him. He wanted a place where he and Bucky could do more than just live together. They could build an actual life.

Because that’s what the move to NASA was meant to be. Their life.

Gale reminds himself of that – reminds himself that he’s thankful for it – as he pushes Bucky down the street, Pepper trotting alongside. Benny’s at work at JSC, no doubt doing some training or another as part of the Artemis 4 backup crew. So, leaving Bucky and Pepper at the end of the driveway, Gale uses his spare key to open Benny’s front door. He can’t even get a foot over the threshold before he’s bombarded by 60 pounds of fur and slobber.

Laughing, Gale works to maintain his balance as he crouches down to Meatball’s level, only to find himself caught in a whirlwind as Pepper, seeing her best friend, sprints up the drive to his other side, simultaneously trying to lick Gale, too, and get to Meatball over his shoulder. When he finally manages to shove them both away and the world becomes clear again, he looks down the drive at Bucky, sees him laughing, and a puzzle piece seems to click into place.

As they wander past the other houses to the end of the street, Gale remembers that first day they drove through the neighborhood. He remembers that feeling of certainty, that this was it, and all of a sudden, he knows that he was right.

He’s lived in so many different places, but none of them were like this. None of them were home. He has so many memories here, though – morning runs and evening walks, cookouts and stargazing and throwing a tennis ball for Pepper. Watching John carry Maggie on his shoulders or swing her around in the air. A house full of people on holidays or birthdays or after the Shackleton incident. Bucky coming home, sitting in the wheelchair on the driveway as he felt the rain for the first time in weeks.

And now as they walk, the four of them, down the quiet road, Gale pushing John in his chair and the dogs trotting in zigzags ahead of them, he knows that this moment will be another good memory. He knows he’ll look back on it, this little bit of peace in the middle of something far too loud.

The warm December sun feels good on his face, and somewhere, the birds are singing. Bucky has his head leaned back, his eyes closed, face toward the sky. “You doin’ okay?” Gale asks.

Bucky’s eyes open, and he smiles up at the clouds. “F-Feels good,” he says. “Bein’ out. It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Gale agrees. “Makes you feel like a person again.”

Bucky huffs in amusement. “Maybe.”

They don’t talk again until they get to the water. The bay is calm today, rippling gently in the sunlight. There’s a kayaker out in the distance, a neighbor jogging past on the path, some ducks on the water, but it’s still a few days too early for the slew of visitors the neighborhood will get for the holidays. Between Christmas and New Year’s, their little slice of serenity will grow busy with visiting families – boats out on the water in the afternoon, kids running up and down the small boardwalk with new toys in tow, couples having picnics in the grass and the smell of block party barbecues on every other street corner.

But today, for the most part, it’s just them.

“This a good spot?” Gale asks, bringing Bucky’s wheelchair to a stop a couple of feet back from the edge of the dock.

Bucky nods as he looks out at the water. Gale locks the chair’s wheels and leans down to kiss the top of Bucky’s head, then he steps to Bucky’s right, hand on his husband’s shoulder.

It’s loud in a quiet way. The birds, the ducks, the water, a gentle breeze. A kid laughs somewhere down the boardwalk. The dogs are trotting back and forth over the dock, playing with each other and barking here and there.

“I missed this place,” Bucky says, taking it all in.

They used to come here every chance they got, before John’s training for Artemis 3 kicked into high gear. Gale jogs along the water most mornings on his own, but before A3, they’d come here together. To walk, to sit on the dock with their feet dangling over the water, to have picnics, to let the dogs explore. They’d bring Maggie here sometimes, and John would pretend he was going to throw her into the water, making her squeal. Gale would laugh nervously, reaching out and warning Bucky to be careful.

“Me, too,” Gale says, even though he’s been here several times recently. It wasn’t the same.

He looks up at the familiar sound of a prop plane somewhere overhead, using his hand to shield his eyes from the midday sun as he stares up into the bright blue sky. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bucky raise a hand to point off to their left, and sure enough, there it is.

“What I’d give to be up there,” Bucky says quietly. “Lucky b-bastard.”

The corner of Gale’s mouth quirks up just a little, because the effect of Bucky swearing gets kind of lost with the stutter. “We’ll get you back,” he says matter-of-factly.

Bucky takes a deep breath in, and they watch the little blue plane until it disappears from view. “I dunno, Buck,” he mutters. The sadness in his voice pulls at Gale’s heart. John’s been angry. He’s been hurt, tired, depressed, nervous. He’s also been hopeful, determined, tough, persistent. There’s something heartbreaking about this moment, hearing John Egan so withdrawn, unsure that he’ll ever feel the sky around him again.

“You will,” Gale tells him easily. Because he believes it. It’s been so damn hard, and he’s been so uncertain about all of it since the moment Benny shook him awake that night, but somehow, he believes it. “You will.”

Bucky nods, and he doesn’t say anything else for a while. They just stay right there, Gale standing beside him, looking out at the water and up at the sky.

“The earth l-looked so small, from up there.”

Gale looks down at Bucky, but Bucky isn’t looking at him. His eyes are still on the sky, like he’s speaking to the world, not to Gale.

“It was so beautiful it h-h-hurt sometimes.” His voice sounds tight, and his face has lost the lightness from their walk over.

“We don’t have to talk about it-”

Bucky shakes his head. He glances at Gale with a soft, barely there smile that fades as quickly as it appeared. “I loved b-bein’ up there, Buck. It was…” He sighs and looks out at the water again. Then he shrugs. “It was.”

There’s no words to describe it. Gale understands, and he’d be kidding himself if he said he wasn’t anxious to see it, to feel it for himself. It’s one small, hard thing about dealing with the fallout from Artemis 3. It’s been so painful and difficult and exhausting and anxiety-inducing every damn day, but he feels his body hum with anticipation whenever he pictures himself stepping foot on the moon. Even after everything, he needs to get there. He feels it in his bones.

It makes him feel sick with guilt sometimes.

“You’ll see,” Bucky says. “Just gotta f-feel it for y-yourself.”

And of course, Bucky knows that about him. Bucky knows better than anyone, but that does nothing to shove down the taste of bile in Gale’s throat, to keep the panicked flush from earlier from returning to his cheeks. He swallows thickly and clenches his jaw.

“John,” he frowns, busying himself with watching another kayaker off to the right, away from his husband.

“What?”

Gale shoves his hands into his pockets to keep his fingers from fidgeting, but he knows that, if Bucky is aware enough to notice, he knows full well that Gale is trying to hide.

“Gale,” Bucky pushes. “L-Look at me.”

Gale shrugs. He doesn’t know how to say what he’s thinking. He doesn’t even know how to think through it in his own head. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to… you almost…” He shakes his head. “But I still need it. I want it.”

It’s so fucked up.

And what if Bucky hadn’t come home? Would he still want it? Would he still wish Chick would put him on that rocket? Would it be because he had a death wish, or because something is wrong with his head and he’d still be searching for whatever he hopes to find out there?

“Nothin’s wrong with you, Buck,” Bucky says, cutting through the chaos. There’s a lightness to his voice, a plain, unbothered certainty, like they’re talking about pineapple on pizza or something just as mundane.

Gale scoffs.

“I mean, no more th-than any of the rest of us,” Bucky corrects, and that makes Gale smirk just a little.

“It’s all so…” Gale shakes his head, takes his hands out of his pockets, runs his fingers through his hair. Fucked. It’s all fucked. “Messed up,” he says instead.

He feels Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 pressing in on him from opposite sides, and sometimes he’s worried that past and future will simply crush him right in the middle with the weight of all the could have’s and maybes.

“Look at me angel,” Bucky says again.

Gale does, turning his head to look squarely at his husband. His eyes find Bucky's, grounding him in the present. It reminds him that he can get lost in those eyes, drown in them until the past and the future spread so far apart that there’s only room for now after all.

Bucky takes Gale's hand, and the warmth of it keeps Gale’s feet on the ground. Bucky looks out over the water again, and he smiles, in that sort of goofy, sure of himself way – the same grin that he had in his Drop Day photo, and on the day that they met, and on their wedding day, and in his astronaut portrait. He smiles just like he always has, just like he always will, and he holds his free hand stretched out to the side like he’s king of the world. "I'm still here aren't I?"

Gale is just staring right at him, taking him in because, yeah, he’s right here.

Pepper and Meatball are down the dock, chasing birds as they flutter over the water, just out of reach. Gale is vaguely aware of them, somewhere at the edges of this moment, and the seconds seem to drag on somehow. But they pass, and the sounds of the dogs barking at each other and the whir of a pontoon boat on the bay and the chirping of birds overhead come back again. Bucky’s hand is still in his, and he looks up at Gale.

His smile changes to something softer, something less devil-may-care. Then it turns humorous. “Enjoy bein’ t-taller than me?” he asks out of nowhere.

Gale stares at him a little dumbly, his brain still holding onto whatever just passed between them. He’s gotten so used to looking down at Bucky in his chair that he doesn’t realize he is anymore. But belatedly, he scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Ain’t that much shorter than you.”

“Yeah?” Bucky smirks. “Let’s see.” He tugs on Gale’s hand insistently, demanding he help him up.

“John-”

“No, Gale, let’s see.”

Gale reluctantly complies, pushing Bucky’s chair back further from the edge of the dock before stepping in front and gathering Bucky into his arms. Slowly, he helps Bucky rise to his feet until they’re face to face, nose to nose.

Gale can’t help but blush just a little at the way Bucky is now undeniably looking down at him, and he feels his heart stutter when, despite the awkwardness, the unsteadiness, Bucky’s hands find their way to Gale’s waist where they belong. He feels more than he sees Bucky smile.

“See?” Bucky says softly. Gale expects a pointed remark about how yes, in fact, Bucky is a good couple inches taller than him and, yes, it does, somehow, seem to matter.

But instead Bucky ducks his head and kisses Gale gently on the cheek. “I’m still here, Buck,” he whispers. “I’m right here.”

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