Chapter Text
I’m walking through the desert
And I’m not frightened although it’s hot
I have all I have requested
And I do not want what I haven’t got
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (Sinéad O’Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, 1990)
John jumped in surprise when he felt arms wrap around his waist. It wasn’t fearful surprise so much as it was a pleasant, warm sort of joy – like getting an unexpected gift or discovering a postcard in the mailbox. He huffed out a soft breath through his nose. Reached down, clasped his hands round the smaller ones that had come to settle on his hips. They were stronger now than they had been two months ago, but there was still a long way to go. He gave them a little squeeze as he felt Gale’s head bump between his shoulder blades. This was new and unfamiliar territory – Gale being up and walking with his cane more often. John was still used to looking for his face at waist height.
“Hey, doll. What’s all this for?”
Gale nuzzled deeper between John’s shoulders. It was cold tonight, even with the woodburning stove going and a fire in the living-room-turned-bedroom. John spun around and wrapped his much larger frame around Gale’s trim shoulders. Engulfed, Gale gave a happy little sigh, clearly relieved to be able to lean his weight into John’s chest and get it off his legs and hips.
“You hurtin’, sweetheart? Wanna come lay down?”
“Hmmm,” Gale grumbled into John’s chest, vibrations and warm breath spreading across his shirt, “No. Not really. Just…missed you. Feels good.”
“Doll, we been in the same house all day. What’re you gonna do when I have to go back to work? Can’t have you showin’ up on base like my girl, all the fellas will catch on.”
How John wished that Gale was his girl. That he could show up on base and sit on his desk all prim and proper, waiting for the door to close so John could devour him.
“Don’t want to think about that,” Gale said, looking up, blue eyes shining, “You still got a week. And I wanna savour it as much as possible.”
John chuckled and walked backwards, legs spread to accommodate Gale close to his chest, until his knees knocked against their new loveseat – an accommodation for the fact that most of their living now had to happen on the main floor, meaning less space and more furniture. He sat down, and pulled Gale into his lap, arm wrapped around shoulders that still didn’t carry quite enough meat on them, knocking against the knobs of a spine that still hurt Gale more than he liked to admit. For a moment, John wanted to reach down and feel that long, healing scar that had saved his sweetheart’s life. But he knew Gale was self-conscious of it. That it was sensitive and sore to boot, and that he barely tolerated his physician touching it. His pale skin had warped and twisted around where the stitches had been – the doc saying something about paler skin being more prone to raised, painful scarring. Gale had flushed at that. When they’d sat down in the truck after the appointment, John had kissed up his milky collarbones. Told him he loved every inch of his perfect, pale skin – scars or otherwise.
“Since ya missed me so much, must mean you’re almost done all that reading you’ve been harping on about.”
Gale shook his head. He looked tired – frustrated.
“No. Just can’t focus anymore. I’m nowhere close to done, and I’m going back next week.”
There was a tinge of hopelessness there, and suddenly Gale’s need for closeness and comfort made much more sense. John gave him a squeeze, kissed the tip of his nose, reddened from the cold even with two fires burning in the house.
“That ain’t anything to do with your head, babydoll. You used to get just as tired out before your accident. Remember, you used to leave your books out on the porch, and then it’d rain and you’d go runnin’ down the stairs to rescue ‘em first thing in the morning? Swear to God it was like a herd of elephants trampling through the house.”
They had this conversation often these days – Gale fuzzy on what might be long-term impacts of his injuries, and what was just run-of-the-mill tiredness and stress. He’d come to John often, asking if he’d done this before, like he couldn’t remember, needed reassurance from someone else who’d been there, who’d known who he was before that day.
This you will be the one worth knowing, John.
Gale nodded, lips quirking up a bit. Usually, he just needed a gentle prompt to remember something. Just like John would reach over to steady his weak hand when it was shaking, he’d give those prompts as long as Gale needed them.
“You’re just tired, Gale. C’mere and get cozy, and I’ll see if I can’t read some of this physics shit to ya. You can get it through osmosis. Absorb it while you rest, you know?”
Gale rolled his eyes.
“Ain’t how that works, Bucky. But I ‘preciate the effort.”
John grinned. He liked when Gale was tired, and he re-adopted a bit of his Midwestern twang. Every bit the handsome, blonde Wyoming cowboy from the penny novel of John’s dreams. Biting his lip, John reached over and took the book that was somehow still dangling limply from between Gale’s fingers, bringing it up to investigate it. Gale blinked bemusedly, as though he had forgotten he was holding onto it at all.
“Hmmm…what’ve we got here? The Determinant of Polym – Jesus fuck, Gale, you taking up a different language here? – Polymeric Molecular Weights by Light Scattering in Solvent-Precipitant Systems,” John chuffed when he finished reading the title, puffing his cheeks up and exhaling noisily, as though it might dispel the tongue-tied feeling in his mouth, “What the hell is this, Buck? Forget being tired, think I woulda gone and died if someone asked me to read that.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I think I am gonna go and die. It’s chemical physics. I’m no good at it – nothing obeys the damn rules, and every time you think you’ve got a handle on something, there’s some sort of exception which makes no sense because it’s nature and there ain’t supposed to be exceptions.”
It was the most Gale had said all day, and it made John’s heart swell fondly. He’d listen to his Buck talk about paint drying if it made him light up the way his work did, but this, it was downright erotic.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get a handle on it,” John smiled, setting the book back down with an exaggerated wince, “Damn smartest little thing I ever laid eyes on. Damn prettiest, too.”
Gale blushed. He looked a bit more alert now, and his fingers were scratching at the top of his brace, fiddling around for the straps that would release it. He was squirming uncomfortably – the brace pressed up against him in unpleasant ways, they’d discovered, when things got heated.
“Need a hand with that, baby?” John breathed, leaning close enough that he could graze his lips along Gale’s flushed cheek, “Or are you just happy to see me?”
“John…c’mon…”
The last vestiges of tiredness fled from his eyes the moment he felt John’s breath against his face. Like clockwork, he was flushed, pale skin gone bright, eyes shining in the light of the lamps and the dancing, crackling flames in the fireplace.
John stood up, leaving Gale writhing on the loveseat, and knocked a few throw cushions from the armchairs onto the carpeted floor. Snatched a blanket from near the fire and spread it out as well, movements well-practiced, knowing by now just how to position things to make sure Gale was comfortable. When he was done, he leaned over, kissed the shell of Gale’s ear, and wrapped his arms easily under his knees and behind his shoulders, hefting him in one smooth motion from the loveseat into the little nest on the floor. Pillows behind his neck and at his knees, one mindfully placed to keep his still-healing back from pressing uncomfortably against the floor.
“You good like that, doll?”
Gale gave a little nod, eyes filmy and sugared with want. He was still fiddling with the straps on his brace, still-clumsy hands not quite able to undo them on his own. Obliging, John threaded them undone himself, sliding the contraption down Gale’s knee and setting it aside. Without its support, his leg tensed a little – toning – before it settled back, seemingly of its own volition, against the pillow John had placed to support Gale’s knee.
The heat of the fire was now nearer. John could feel it warming his back, and Gale was flushed and a little sweaty, hair flopping over and sticking to his forehead. His lips were parted, breathing in the warm air in the tiny space between their mouths as John leaned forwards. Exhales brushed softly against his face, and he closed his eyes, thankful every day that air was still passing between that beautiful cupid’s bow.
“You feelin’ good enough for this, doll? I don’t mind if you aren’t, we can lay here and fall asleep in front of the fire. I can hold ya for a bit. Know you like that.”
But Gale shook his head, eyes somehow both soft with want and hard with determination. He reached up, fiddled at John’s belt until John used his own hands to help guide Gale’s clumsy fingers through the motions of undoing it. Slid down his pants to his knees, pulled off his shirt and undershirt so he was awkwardly kneeling in his skivvies, pants around his ankles.
“Give me a hand?” Gale implored, biting his bottom lip in the way he knew drove John wild. All eager, practiced hands, John let Gale attend to his shirt while he undid the clasp of his belt and shimmied his pants and skivvies off, leaving him naked and glistening with sweat on the blanket.
Ever shy, Gale’s cheeks flushed even brighter, and it took him a moment to meet John’s eyes again. John, reverent, ran his hands up Gale’s torso, trying to kick his pants down over his feet without being too obvious about it.
“Goddamnit, Gale,” he breathed, when he was sure he wasn’t about to get tangled up in his own clothes and make a fool of himself, “Goddamnit, you’re so beautiful. Like a damn angel, look at you. You’re too good for this world.”
And Gale looked it – lying with one hand next to his face like a saint giving benediction, the other reaching for John’s waist to pull his skivvies down. His hair was darkened with sweat at the roots, spread flush against the dark red throw pillow John had tossed on the ground to prop up his head. Hazy blue eyes, big and wide and waiting, long eyelashes grazing flushed cheeks. John could feel a myriad of little scars on his torso. Each a reminder that Gale was alive, breathing, warm underneath him. Aroused, his cock brushing up against the crease of John’s ass as he managed to toe off his skivvies and flick them with a well-timed twist of his ankle into some corner of the living room. Briefly, he hoped Clem wouldn’t make off with them in the way she was so fond of doing with errant socks.
For all that Gale’s hands trembled with fine tasks, they were still clever – long pianists’ fingers wrapping around John’s cock with ease and familiarity completely juxtaposed by the wide, open innocence of Gale’s gorgeous face framed in the firelight. He gave a tug, and smirked when John gasped. Stroked up the back, pulled his hand away to lick a long strip down his own thumb before returning to the sensitive ridge there, pressing up, mirroring John’s little gasps as bursts of pleasure began running through him.
“Jesus…Jesus, Gale. Jesus.” John panted after a few moments of slow stroking. It could’ve been seconds or hours. There were sparks forming at the corners of his vision, and he could feel himself thrusting forward into Gale’s hand, wicked now as it twisted a little, sharp pain contrasted with mellow pleasure.
“There you go,” Gale encouraged softly, eyes still wide like he wasn’t moving his hand in ways that made John feel like he was ascending into the stars Gale loved so much, “There you go, John. You take my hand so good, you know that? Don’t even ask for anything more, just content to take what I give to ya. You’re so good, love, so good.”
John loved that. Gale only called him pet names when they were having sex – when, for some reason, he became surprisingly verbose. John liked being Gale’s love, saved for private, whispered moments in the heat of the fire and their own ecstasy.
“God, Gale. God, you’re so pretty. I can’t…”
John’s hips stuttered, pent-up and on edge. Immediately, Gale pulled back. Cruel, for all his wide-eyed beauty, biting his lip like he didn’t know what he’d just done. His leg was spasming underneath John, but he knew better than to let it stop them. The muscles got weaker and looser when Gale was tired, or excited. It meant John was doing his job.
“John…would you?”
“Yeah, yeah, sweetheart. C’mere, my baby. Lemme take care of you.”
He was so hard it was painful, blood rushing through his cock even as he tamped down the urge to fuck himself between Gale’s legs, instead working his way down the other man’s chest with soft kisses, ignoring the friction of dragging himself first over Gale’s body and then the blanket beneath them. When he reached Gale’s cock, pink and pearly with want, he leaned a bit of weight on the spasming leg. There was a phantom of pain on Gale’s face.
“You alright, angel? Leg hurtin’ ya?”
“Yeah…don’t stop, John. Please. Don’t stop.”
“You sure? Don’t wanna hurt you.”
“John. Please.”
There was more than naked want in Gale’s face. Every inch of him was tense, John could feel his muscles contracting beneath his hands, quivering with anticipation. But it wasn’t just physical. Gale looked like he needed this – needed it to feel whole again. Needed it to not feel broken, to not feel like he was some broken china cup that John had to hold carefully, to keep from bending or setting down too hard, lest it break.
John understood. He knew because it was the same way he had felt in the Stalag. When Gale had punched him in the face and dragged him through the dirt – the only way to make him listen after months of treating him like he was breakable.
John knew what it was like to need to be broken a little, to be broken with love, to feel whole.
He ran his hands down the insides of Gale’s thighs, thin and pale, spreading them as far as his bad leg would go. With a protracted gasp of pain and pleasure, Gale let him. His lips were parted, eyes dark, sweat pasting his forehead to his brow.
“That’s it, baby,” John cooed, feeling the pass of the torch as Gale went from toying with him to entirely at his mercy, eyes wide and expressive, waiting, watching, trusting, “Love it when you don’t even need words to be good for me. Know exactly what I need you to do, don’t ’cha?”
Gale nodded, something that might have been whispery assent slipping from his mouth. He’d throw both of his hands up on either side of his head, a distant pantomime of the way they used to have to stand at appel, hands raised, while the krauts counted them. Only now, Gale’s hands were loose and relaxed, nails clean and unbruised, fingers pink. John smiled. Leaned back up for a moment and took Gale’s right hand in his left. He kissed each one of those tidy, unblemished knuckles the way he’d received Holy Communion on the altar as a boy – lips parted, tongue pressing forward. He licked the taste of Gale’s skin. Tried to imprint it in his memory.
Gale bucked after a moment. Spasms from his leg combined with inattention to his cock, John knew, and with a sly smile, he descended back between Gale’s legs, licking a strip from his chin down to below his navel. A shudder ran through the smaller man’s body, muscles wasted away from months of disuse but still able to ripple with pleasure and anticipation.
From there, John knew just what Gale liked. Luckily, he hadn’t lost any sensation other than in his leg. Purposefully, he leant down, licking slowly, letting his throat click as he took all of Gale into his mouth, moaning when his cock brushed against the back of John’s throat. The vibration rippled through the both of them. Gale squirmed. John pulled on and off a few times, gently, slowly. He let his hands massage Gale’s bad leg at the same time, hoping to ease the spasms still ripping through it. Gale moaned – pleasure and pain and relief all in one, and John pulled back, an obscene string of spit still connecting them.
“That feel good? You like that, baby? Like when I make you feel better?”
Gale squirmed on the pillows. He was soaked with sweat. John pinched him gently.
“Gotta give me an answer, angel, or I’m gonna think you don’t like it.”
“Y-yeah,” Gale panted, hot, “S’good, John, please…”
“You’re good at asking, sweetheart. So polite. Please, John. Thank you, John. Makes me feel like I’m in heaven.”
John descended back onto Gale’s cock, sucking, hollowing his cheeks when he felt a telltale rush of blood pulsing around his lips. Hummed a little as Gale writhed, clearly trying to keep himself under control. Gale never had learned how to let go – he’d hold on as long as he could, like he was waiting for John to take him apart piece by piece.
But John knew by now, could tell when Gale was about to lose control. He wrapped his big hands around those trim hips, enjoying how small they felt in his grasp, dragging his own cock against the blanket underneath him to chase his own satisfaction. Took Gale all the way to the back of his throat a few more times, heard the soft ah-ah-ah of inhaled pants as uncoordinated legs kicked weakly beneath him, followed by a shuddering breath and a hollow moan when Gale soundlessly spilled into John’s mouth, and John swallowed around him, letting him grow soft before he finally slipped off with an obscene sound. The blankets beneath him were damp and heavy, and he felt just as wrung out as Gale looked.
John lowered himself down next to Gale. They lay there for a while, combing fingers through each other’s hair. They didn’t need to speak – Gale’s grateful, love-stricken eyes said it all. And John felt it inside him, a wholeness, a relief, a sense of gratitude. A bit of normalcy in a life that still felt turned upside down most days.
Finally, Gale turned painfully on his side, wincing. John reached out, rubbing his hip where he knew he got sore.
“You alright? Didn’t overdo it?”
“Maybe a little,” Gale admitted sheepishly, eyes downcast, lashes splayed on sweaty cheeks, “Might need to put some heat on it later. But…John…”
“I know, baby, I know.”
“I…you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that. Again. I…I…you just…I don’t know…”
It was charming, the way Gale got tongue-tied. Too quiet for his own good, John always teased.
“You don’t gotta tell me, baby. Don’t gotta use words if they’re too hard. I know. I know, sweetheart. I love you so damn much.”
“Nah,” Gale whispered, eyes still sugary and misty, spent, “Can’t love me more than I love you.”
They fell asleep wrapped around one another, two halves of a whole, comfortable.
Before them, the fire shifted into embers. Not gone, just changed.
Matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed. This is one of the primary assumptions of physics, the law of conservation of mass.
Under this basic assumption, one might be able to state a similar thing about energy. Under certain conditions, matter can be converted into energy, and vice versa. In the case of particle-antiparticle annihilation, mass is not conserved on its own but rather mass-energy is conserved.
In this way, physical bodies and the energy they hold are inherently linked. One depends upon the other, feeds the other, and without both, each would be equally destroyed.
Energy can also be described in many other ways: physical, emotional, spiritual. Longing is energy. Hatred, envy, fear, grief, joy. Love, perhaps, is the strongest of all. The bond that, like particle antiparticle annihilation, requires both mass and energy to remain alive: both a body and a soul in which to take up root. Without one, the other cannot survive. Even if one body is dead, decaying, its energy remains at home in the love the surviving partner and family carries, in their remembrance.
Mass and energy weave their ways through the tangibles of our day-to-day lives. Changing, growing, becoming. But never leaving, never being created. Only shifting, as we find the body to complement our own, the energy that matches ours. It cannot be created. Nor can it be destroyed. And once it finds a home, a purpose, it becomes infinitely harder to change.
When he was a child, Gale had hated the winter. He hated it because he wanted to love it. Snow sprinkled on the ground, Christmas, his birthday. All the things that were supposed to make little boys happy, just reminded Gale of how much he was missing. There’d never been any birthday celebrations for him. Especially once his daddy stopped winning at all at the racetracks, and his mama got grey and hollow-cheeked, sinking further and further into her armchair with each passing day, until one day Gale woke up and she was gone.
Nothing ever changed in the winter. It just got greyer and colder and people went more into debt. Your arms got tired from shovelling snow and the sky just dumped more down. The wind cut like ice. And in Poland, when he’d been without so much as a coat, Gale had decided. Winter was unredeemable to him. He hated everything about it. The cold, the snow, the holidays that seemed to always come for everyone but him. A Stalag Christmas was no Christmas at all. And Bucky had been too far gone, then, to remember his birthday.
So, when he woke one morning in early December after his accident to snow on the ground, Gale felt himself wither inside. He’d been dreading this for all the usual reasons, alongside the fact that he couldn’t drive, that he probably wouldn’t be able to manage the steps with his cane and the way his foot dragged. That he would be in pain for the whole day, bedbound and miserable, useless. Already when he woke, his leg hurt so badly that he had to breathe through a whimper – pressure changes from the weather, the doctor had said – but it woke John anyways.
“G’morning,” he mumbled sleepily, rubbing sand from his eyes, cheeks flushed and puffy from sleep, but eyes brightening as soon as he saw the tightness in Gale’s mouth, the way pain read in every feature, “Hey, love. You okay?”
John didn’t even notice the blanket of white outside, illuminating the early morning light with the sort of ghostly gray that only came from reflection of a cloud-covered sky on a snow-covered ground. Gale swallowed. His throat clicked audibly. He rubbed his leg. He was trying to be better at this – being honest. Not being a martyr. Years of being a Major, of putting others’ pain, including John’s, before his own was proving a hard habit to break.
“It hurts,” Gale gritted out, sentences short and clipped, “ Real bad. I need the pills. ‘S the change in weather, something about the-the barometric pressure. The doc warned me this might happen.”
He could feel disappointment flowing from every joint in his body as he said it, and he saw John sag as well. Today was supposed to be the day Gale finally went back to class. He’d been working up to it for weeks, ensuring his stamina was good enough, that he wouldn’t trip and fall on the way to class, even asking one of his classmates to walk him from place to place so he wouldn’t be alone (though that had been at John’s request – he’d winced and grimaced all the way through that phone call). He’d been hoping to get back before the snow came. Hoping to at least get into some sense of normalcy before the seasons changed again.
“Okay, sweetheart. Just gimme a minute. Be right back.”
Gale could see how hard John was trying to keep the hurt from his voice. The sadness. It made something fond and painful curl in his gut.
John crawled out of bed, and Gale just tried to breathe through the stabs of pain his leg and hips until he returned. It was warm and comfortable under the feather duvet. The sort of comfort that once would’ve made Gale want to lie there and never move again. Now, all he wanted was to have the ability to pull himself up as easily as John had, stumble in his shorts blearily across the room. Go to class without months of preparation. Without something as simple as a snowstorm stopping him dead in his tracks.
When he came back, John was dripping, his face red and his chestnut curls a little messy from having splashed water from the kitchen faucet on his cheeks. He rattled the pill bottle, rubbed his eyes.
“Need one? Or two?”
“Two, please.”
Gale felt like a failure. But John just gave him a sweet smile, tipped two white, chalky pills into his mouth, helped him chase them down with a sip of water.
“There ya go. Now, I’m gonna go warm up that bag of cherry pits in the oven for your hip, and make us some coffee. And then we’ll see about a massage, and you can go back to sleep once those kick in.”
“But…” Gale frowned, rubbing his forehead, sticky with sweat – the pain must’ve had him sleeping fitfully before it’d finally woken him up, “What about work?”
John had been back on base for a little over a week, though apparently he was stuck on desk duty, and he’d been practically chewing through the furniture when he came home because of it. If Gale hadn’t been so tired from trying to catch up on all the reading he’d missed, he might’ve been exasperated by John’s seemingly boundless energy.
“Snow day. I’ll tell ‘em I can’t get outta the driveway. I’m really not sure I could – there’s gotta be at least three feet out there. Sure I won’t be the only one.”
In his own experience, Gale had found the Army didn’t tend to be particularly responsive to such excuses. But John was charming to a fault – DeMarco had once said he could charm the fish right out of the sea. There was nothing the man wanted that he didn’t get, once he’d set his mind to it. And Gale was too tired to argue. He just nodded, gave a watery smile as his leg seized under the covers. He gave it a vicious thump, trying to get the muscles to relax, and John lunged over the bed to grab his fist before it made contact.
“Hey,” he admonished quietly, “Don’t got beatin’ on my sweetheart like that.”
It didn’t usually help anyways, just made Gale feel like he was doing something. A week ago, John had noticed the bruises dotting up and down his thigh, broad brow prickling inwards with concern. Gale had promised he’d stop, but coming off the pain meds the last few weeks, that was easier said than done. He felt like a coiled spring – wound tight, sick with hurt, waiting for it to stop and desperate to move on.
John curled back up in bed around Gale like a cat, two mugs of coffee balanced precariously, their brown liquid sloshing about the rims as he leaned over and set one down on the bedside table before downing his own in one go. He wrapped the heated bag of cherry pits – another gift from one of the church girls, who suffered from arthritis – around Gale’s hip. It was swollen and red, and John’s face puckered up when he saw it.
“You bump this or something? It looks angry.”
“No. Just the weather, I think,” Gale took a lazy sip of his coffee, smiled at the oily blackness of it, something John couldn’t stand but made dutifully every morning because it was how Gale preferred it, “Feels better with the heat. I’m sorry, John, I don’t think I’m gonna be much good to you today. These meds make me so damn tired, and I couldn’t stand right now if you offered me a million dollars.”
John gave him a kiss on the cheek and slunk over so he was hovering above Gale’s hips, big hands holding him gently there, thumbs circling in a slow, soothing motion.
“Don’t worry. I ain’t leaving your side today, sweetheart. We’ll have a lazy day. Been a while since I took a good nap, anyways. But first, you want me to rub your leg a bit? You’re makin’ a face.”
Gale was pretty sure that in trying to stop making “a face,” he schooled his expression into something even more strained, because John burst out laughing and told him he looked like he was trying to lay an egg. Gale squinted and pinched him, vision beginning to turn hazy from the painkillers, but he felt a little smile turning up his lips all the same.
“Be nice if ya did, Bucky. Might rest my eyes while you do. Damn pills got me tired.”
Humming, John let the circles his thumbs were making deepen, rubbing against the joints of Gale’s hips right where they hurt the most, soothing along nerves that often felt like they operated independently of any oversight these days. He alternated between that and smoothing his hands up and down Gale’s thigh muscles, pressing the heels of his hands deep into an ache that felt like it had settled in his bones. John stopped occasionally to ask if this was good, if the pressure was right, if anything hurt. Sinking into the warmth and his own heavy eyes, Gale could only nod, eventually just squeezing John’s hand when it felt particularly good. He floated on the warmth, on the slow easing of his tight muscles. The painkillers erased his disappointment, made him forget that he was supposed to be on campus right now, in class. They wiped his mind clean, let him float in a liminal space where he could feel John’s hands on his skin, where he could see the grey reflection of a snow-lit day on the backs of his own eyelids, but couldn’t remember why he needed John’s help, or why the snow had hurt him so much.
When he opened his eyes, the bed was cold, as was the heat that had kept his hip so comfortable, and he could tell that several hours had passed. There was a fuzziness in his head, cotton on his tongue leftover from the drugs. Wincing, he rolled over and downed the now-cold coffee still sitting on the bedside table in one gulp. It was unpleasant, slithering down his gullet, an errant hair floating on the surface that Gale noticed too late to stop from swallowing it.
The fire had also burned down in the fireplace, though it was clear John had built it up to keep Gale warm at some point because it was still smoking, and they never let it burn overnight for fear that Clem would get curious and wander too close to the flames. But it looked like it had been hours since it had been really burning – hours that Gale had been alone, hours that were unaccounted for. The sun had long since reached its zenith and begun its descent, the wintry light outside the window making time feel even more protracted.
It had been too long. Gale didn’t know what had happened. He’d been warm, and John had been with him, and he’d fallen asleep. Now he was alone, and the passage of time had no meaning because day was once again bleeding into night, and he didn’t remember a moment of it.
A whole day, just gone.
“John?” He called, suddenly assaulted by a pang of anxiety, because there were no sounds of movement coming from the rest of the house, not even the soft thumps of Clem’s paws on the hardwood, “John, you here?”
Gale hated calling for John and then immediately asking for something – it felt needy, and he’d done too much of it in the months that had followed coming home from the hospital. But he needed to piss, and there was no way he was making it to the bathroom on his own. Besides, as he cast about, he saw that his cane was nowhere to be seen.
“John, did you move my cane? I need to get up…”
Still, nothing. Gale’s heart started pounding in his ears. Something prickled along his arms like pinpricks, and he remembered it from that moment when he’d vaulted over the wall in Poland as pure, unadulterated panic.
Static rose in his ears. She’s going down Major, we gotta bail. Nothing but static on the radio. My little Kriegie Marconi. Can’t hear anything, war could be over for all we know.
Moments knocked into one another in his jumbled, sleep-addled brain, and before Gale knew it his feet were on the floor and his knees were on his elbows, cradling his face which was shaking with the force of his own sawing breaths.
The static rose and rose, and darkness encroached on his vision, and he tried to call for John. But if he made any sound, it was overwhelmed by the sound of an engine feathering, and then of an almighty crash, the smell of smoke and steam and a burnt-out clutch, and Gale was spinning in the stars, lying flat on his back with no feeling below his waist.
John. Bucky.
Gale was going down and he knew John wasn’t with him. Falling over Bremen and there was nothing beneath his feet but flak and smoke and terra nullius.
His breaths heaved in and out for what felt like years. The floor was cold.
Static sparked and died.
His leg was spasming and his back hurt. Had he crashed? Had he hurt his back?
You got a broken back.
Gale wanted John. But John wasn’t in Bremen. He was in London. He was on base, teaching.
Breathe in, breathe out.
And then there was a frantic pounding that didn’t sound like bombs or flak, a voice that Gale wasn’t expecting to hear because his radio was dead, and his ears were ringing because he’d just been hit by a car.
“Hey, hey, Gale, what’s going on? Talk to me, you gotta talk to me, oh, Jesus, do I need to call an ambulance? You havin’ a seizure, sweetheart? C’mon, open those eyes, lemme see, gonna make it all better but you gotta open your damn eyes, please!”
Gale was shaking. No, he was being shaken. Violently. His head was juddering on his shoulders and his hands, slack, were twitching in his lap. He could feel that his bad leg was turned in, toes pointing downwards in the way it had in those first bad days when he could hardly move at all.
Slowly, his memories came back. They weren’t over Bremen. He wasn’t lying in front of their house. Shuddering, he tried to open his eyes. They were sticky with sweat and tears and something else, something indescribable, but he managed to look up at John’s pale face. He had the phone on his lap, huge and clunky – he must’ve dragged it in from the hall, and he looked like he was about two dial-spins into calling an ambulance.
“Oh, Jesus, Gale. Hi. You in there? Just squeeze my hand, you don’t gotta talk. Just lemme know you can hear me.”
It was then that Gale realized that this was worse than a flashback – that this was nothing like he’d ever experienced before, because when he tried to open his mouth, there was drool trailing down his chin, and his hands were weak and slow to squeeze John’s. He looked at him, fearful, horror roiling in his gut.
John shovelled the driveway in record time. Carried Gale to the truck wrapped in a blanket and wearing new trousers and one of John’s flannel sleep shirts because he’d pissed himself somewhere along the line – he’d cried as John helped him change, big, humiliated tears, his dad’s voice in his ear. He was listless all the way to the hospital, dipping between and sleep and wakefulness like a duck dabbling in a lake. John tried to keep him talking, but Gale could barely slur through a few disjointed words. He felt confused and hazy, and when they admitted him at the door, it was a relief to be able to lie back down. Sleep came too easily, and Gale only woke occasionally, each time in a different place, fluorescent lights streaming into his bleary eyes. He responded a little to being poked and prodded by nurses and eventually a doctor. They tried to ask him questions to test his cognition, and Gale did his best, but he was lethargic. By the time they finally released him with a strict order to do nothing but rest and an orange bottle rattling with little blue pills, he could barely keep his head up. John carried him to the car. There was no one around to see, not at this hour.
“Jesus, Gale,” he would remember John saying later, as he tucked him into bed and propped him up safely, so he wouldn’t choke on his own tongue, the way the doctor had shown them that night, “Jesus, sweetheart. You tell me if you feel another one coming, okay? I’m right here, I got your meds. You just tell me, and we’ll make sure you’re okay.”
Gale didn’t know at the time what John was talking about, another one. It wasn’t until days later, when he was less foggy and up and about again, though his steps were shakier than they had been in months, that he learned he’d had a seizure. An absence seizure, the doctor had called it. Brought on by mental and physical trauma.
Strangely, when he heard that, there was no grief. At one time, Gale might’ve been angry, petrified, any number of things. At one time, seizures would’ve grounded him. But he wasn’t a pilot anymore. He was John’s. He was studying what he loved. He was healing. And the docs had told him, take it slow. Take it slow, and he might never have another one again.
That night, the one after the seizure, he dreamt of flying for the first time again. And it was John in the seat to his right, wild grin on his face, nothing but blue skies out the window behind him.
Time domain astronomy allows for the study of change in celestial bodies over a long period of time, including change that has not yet occurred, but that could occur in the future. It places emphasis on time as a measure of hypotheticals: on the infinite possibilities of the future, and the need to account for as many as possible.
However, accounting for all the possibilities of the future is a futile task. For decades, astronomers have tried to prepare for as many as possible – to see, to give warnings, to prepare for some cataclysm that can only be seen through formulae and numbers.
When preparing for the future, accounting for the endless nature of the universe, the statistical nature of it, is impossible. After all, from a statistical physicist’s perspective, if you ran at a solid object enough times, eventually, statistically, you would have to pass through.
Statistics is the study of impossibilities.
But when preparing for the unknown, one cannot account for impossibilities. One can barely account for facts, for the known.
One must simply jump, and hope that, statistically, something will be there to catch them.
“You sure you’re ready for this, angel? You got everything you need?”
Gale rolled his eyes. He canted himself sideways, putting all his weight into his good arm and on his cane, lifting his bad leg so it was barely on the ground. He was feeling sore today, but good. Prepared. Better than he had in a while.
“Think I’m gonna be okay, John. This ain’t my first time leaving the house, y’know.”
“Yeah, but it’s the first time you’re leaving since you got hurt. Forgive a guy for worryin’ after you a bit.”
Gale grinned and took a couple halting steps across the snow-dusted driveway. He was wearing a new overcoat: it was dusted dark green with steel buttons, and felt like a good replacement for the dirty brown oil-washed coat he’d found at the charity shop when they’d moved in. John had given it to him wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with a string, and since the first time Gale had put it on, John hadn’t stopped yapping about how handsome it made him look. It felt professional. The way a graduate student should look – not like a farmhand, but like someone who belonged in an institute of higher learning. Gale had combined it with some brown pants and a navy button-down, and wrapped the blue scarf that John had repatriated to him at the hospital around his neck. Impressions mattered today. He couldn’t go in looking like a guy who was no longer able to take care of himself. No matter how long it had taken for John to help him do up all the tiny buttons on his shirt this morning. Gale’s hands were still clumsy on cold mornings.
“Careful, love. Driveway’s still slippery. You sure you don’t want to bring your wheelchair, just in case?”
Gale tamped down a flicker of annoyance. John didn’t mean to fuss, he was just being kind, ensuring everything was set in order for Gale to have the easiest return to school possible. But Gale wanted to feel independent today – didn’t want to even give his legs a chance to fail him, because he knew if he had the chair to fall back on, he was more likely to falter.
“No, John. David says I’m alright for the whole day with the cane now, as long as I keep the brace on. My leg’s a lot stronger than it was. And I’ll be sitting mostly anyways – not like attending class is very physically demanding.”
“’Kay. And you got your meds, ‘case you have a seizure?”
Then Gale did roll his eyes. He’d only ever had the one seizure – there’d never been a second occurrence after that awful day in winter. And that had been months ago. Months he’d spent carefully weaning down his dose on a seizure medication that had left him sleepy and lethargic, to the point where his doctor had finally seen fit to replace it with what he’d called a “rescue medication” – something to be taken only if Gale felt the same tell-tale symptoms that had signalled his first episode. Symptoms he’d studied so well he could recite them in his sleep.
“John, I’ll be fine. I’ve been fine, love. Been at home by myself for almost a month and a half while you been back at work now, and I ain’t managed to kill myself yet. Don’t think that I’ll find a way on a campus full of other people.”
John winced and bit his lip. Squinted up his eyes and gathered Gale into his arms, squeezing tightly.
“I know, angel. Just can’t quite get that image outta my head, that you were meant to be safe at home. Weren’t meant to almost die just walkin’ down the driveway. So I think I might be a little skittish for a while yet.”
Gale nodded into John’s shoulder.
“I know. It’s okay. Think I’m still skittish, too.”
He hadn’t walked down the driveway since he’d been back. His leg was strong enough now, though the driveway was icy. But he couldn’t bear it, didn’t want to retrace the last steps he’d taken as a man who didn’t need a cane to walk, didn’t limp so severely that his knee hardly bent on bad days. Didn’t have seizures and hand tremors. Hell, he couldn’t even drive anymore. He’d taken his old license to the DMV, watched the pity cross the woman’s eyes when she’d noticed his cane and bulky brace as she’d sliced the license in half with a pair of shears and ordered a new government identification card to their house in its stead.
He was at peace with all that, he thought. He tried to be, anyways. Some days were easier than others. He loved his life, John’s warmth, their home, their garden, the classes he was going back to. But that didn’t mean he didn’t glance over his shoulder sometimes, look back at another Gale Cleven – one who’d been fundamentally different to the man he was now.
This version of you will be the one worth knowing.
John helped Gale into the passenger seat with tender hands, and drove his old car along the snowy roads, squinting a little in the sun, upper lip curled in the way it did when he was concentrating. There was some old jazz tune playing on the radio, and he tapped his thumbs gently on the steering wheel, humming along. Gale watched him fondly for the whole way in, content to lean into the space between the seat and the door of the car. He leaned his cheek back against the window, letting the coolness seep into it. Stretched his leg until it was comfortable, let a little smile play across his lips, enjoying John’s side profile juxtaposed against the snowy ground and the blue, blue skies hurrying by outside the window.
When they got into the city, Gale pulled a toothpick from the little silver case in his pocket. He hadn’t chewed one in months, mostly because John kept worrying he was going to have some sort of fit and choke on it. Even now, John eyed him.
“Ain’t gonna choke, love. Half the guys won’t recognize me if I don’t show up with one of these. Hell, I think most of the boys in the Hundredth knew that I liked toothpicks before they even knew what my voice sounded like.”
“That’s just ‘cause you’re so quiet, sweetheart. I barely knew what your voice sounded like for the first six months I knew you, and we bunked together.”
Gale chuckled as John pulled to a stop at a red light, the countryside having bled into the square, brick buildings of the city.
“Maybe I just had more important things to do than spend my time sweet talkin’ you, Bucky.”
“Well, I’m glad I got all the time in the world now to make up for that sweet talking I missed out on, Buck.”
John reached over and clasped Gale’s knee for a moment before the light turned and he put the car back into gear. Another few minutes of intersections and identical rows of buildings, and they were pulling into the parking lot behind the astronomy lab. Gale felt his stomach tighten suddenly. He snapped his toothpick in half without realizing it, and spat the two broken halves into his palm.
“Damn,” he chuckled, nervous now, not wanting John to know, “Guess my strength’s comin’ back in my jaw, too.”
John narrowed his eyes, turning the keys in the ignition so the car went quiet. The parking lot was empty – they’d arrived early so Gale would have time to set his things down in the office, to make his way to his seminar without rushing and risking a fall.
Nerves jolted through Gale’s stomach like lightning bolts. He felt sweaty, and for a moment he worried he was going hot again, but this wasn’t that sort of flush – it was the sick heat of fear.
John reached over and took Gale’s cheek in his hand. His big hands – Gale loved the way it felt to be held by them, the way John’s palm covered his entire cheek. He sighed into the feeling, leaned into the other man’s warmth. Clenched and unclenched his fists a few times.
“What’s on your mind, sweetheart?” John asked at length, not moving his hand, just encouraging Gale to come closer until he was leaned over the centre console and wrapped properly in John’s arms. He sighed shakily.
“Just…I’m different now. I’m different and I don’t want them to see that. To perceive it. I want to walk in there and have them not notice me at all, because that would be better than them noticing me and then treating me like I’m someone else. I-I’m not sure I can face that. They could think I don’t deserve to be here anymore. That I’m just a charity case, the poor war vet who had bad enough luck to get run over by a car outside his own house, so now the department can’t kick him out even though he’ll never be as good as he was before. I…I don’t want them to look at me and think that, not even for a second. But I know some of them will.”
Gale shuddered when he was done. He was still getting used to being honest around John. Speaking that many sentences left him feeling like he’d run a marathon. Trembling, he looked up, almost afraid to make eye contact. Afraid that now he’d mentioned it to John, the other man also wouldn’t be able to see him as anything more than a charity case. Deep down, he knew better. But the ugly part of his mind, the devil on his shoulder, whispered poisonous nothings in his ear all the same.
After what felt like minutes of heart-pounding silence, John took Gale’s chin in his hand, turned his face upwards so they were staring directly at one another. There was a hard glint in his eye – the one he’d had before he’d told Gale to run.
“Gale Cleven, I want you to look at me and listen to me good, ‘cause I ain’t gonna say this more than once,” John said, and his tone wasn’t harsh, just firm, confident, collected, “More than any other guy in this building, you’ve been through hell and back. You survived fuckin’ flak over Germany, being shot down, years of being a POW. And then you came home, to the place you were supposed to be safe, and you got hurt again. But I’ve never seen someone who’s been dealt such a shit hand in life handle it with so much grace as you, Gale. You were a leader in that Stalag. Our boys adored you, looked up to you, goddamn everywhere I turned it was Buck Cleven this and Buck Cleven that. Might’ve made me jealous, ‘cept I was so damn proud of you. And then back here, you got yourself up, you got yourself walking again when no one was sure you would. You’ve been doing physio that I know hurts like hell and you’ve never once complained, because that’s who you are, and it drives me goddamned insane sometimes, but it’s you and you’re the man I chose to love, and I am so goddamned proud of you. And if a single one of those jumped-up little assholes in there so much as looks at you wrong, you can bet that he and I’ll be havin’ words. You got that Gale? You have more right than anyone to be here. Even more now because you fought to be back here. You decided that this life was worth fighting for, and you fought. So don’t you ever, not for one second, think you’re different or less than because you were in the war, or because you got a limp, none of it. All that does, Gale, is it shows how much this matters to you. How much you wanted this.”
They stayed quiet for a long time after that. Gale sniffled, tried to bite back the tears rolling down his cheeks, but John just wiped them up with his thumb, the same way he had all those months ago when Gale had been crying in pain in the hospital.
“Y’know, John…didn’t just choose to stay because of school or a better life after the war or any of it. I chose to stay because of you.”
“I know, sweetheart. ‘Cause I did too. In the Stalag, or when I was eating fuckin’ cabbage in a swamp in Germany. All that was for you.”
John leaned over and kissed Gale’s forehead, slow and sweet, thumbing along his cheeks and reaching down to rub his hips where he knew they got sore when Gale had been sitting and wearing his brace for a while.
“Now you go in there and show ‘em that it’s gonna take more than a goddamned idiot and his goddamned car to keep ya from being the smartest guy in that room.”
“John…” Gale groaned with a watery smile – but it was a smile. He ruffled John’s chestnut curls, hauled himself back over the console with a wince, rubbing the length of his bad leg, waiting for the pins and needles sparkling up and down it to disperse. Then, he gathered his briefcase – a new addition so he wasn’t lugging all his books around when he only had one free arm – and his cane, and opened the door. It let out a low groan.
“Gonna oil those hinges one of these days, angel,” John reassured him, before Gale could even comment, “You have a good day now. Call if you need anything.”
Gale stood, slower and more painful than the last time he’d been here, but he was standing, and that was a miracle in and of itself. Took a deep breath of winter air, of the bookish smell that seemed to linger even in the outside spaces of campus. Next to his and John’s house, that place, that smell, would always be home to him. Turning, he tapped his fingers twice against the window, same as he used to do when he and John were about to taxi on the runway. Not a goodbye. An “I’m with you.”
John rapped his own knuckles on the steering wheel in return. Gave one last smile, and pulled out of the lot.
Gale breathed.
This you, Gale. This you is the one who chose to be here. Who fought to be here, for whatever that means. This you in the one worth knowing.
The sun glistened down above him as he limped inside, harsh in the winter light. But it was past equinox, each day climbing higher in the sky. It signalled a change, as sure as the sun was to rise and set – that warmth was coming again. In the meantime, the snow cast a sparkling white glow across the campus. A clean slate, flat and gleaming.
Gale let his breath release, clouding in the winter air, writing the first brushstroke on the canvas of snow.