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homosexuality would be a lot easier for gale to accept if john would stop going AWOOOGA like a cartoon character when he climaxes

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gale cleven + micro-expressions

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“There’s nothing heroic about suffering” okay but what if I suffered and I was kinda sexy with it. Like my shorts were a little too short and you could see my ass when I bent over. What then.

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additionally have any of us considered that the fundamental hurdle for overcoming in the clegan rel can be metaphorically summarized by bucky being the type of guy who would flop down onto one of those set mattresses at a mattress store while gale would watch him with his hands on his hips too afraid of his own whimsy to join

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prompting you more of gale being bucky's boy, in whatever way you see fit to write it, my liege

hiii ♥️ this fits into thick bucky verse i think

It’s not till Gale’s in the middle of it that he lets himself wonder how the hell he got here. He lines up a shot, sink two balls and waits for the man opposite the table from him take his turn.

That one’s looking at you, Bucky had said the hour before. They’d just gotten there, hadn’t even been seated at the bar for more than 10 minutes. In a low voice, Bucky bet him that within two drinks, if Gale lingered around the pool tables, the man would ask if he was looking for a game.

Gale eyed the man discreetly. He fit the bill. A little shorter than Bucky, but broader, too, his thick arms and thighs heavy with muscle and the curve of his gut kissing his belt buckle. He was older than Gale and John both. He could’ve walked out of one of Gale’s memories of wanting and never having. He could’ve come from the barstools of Gale’s hometown.

And then what? Gale had asked, barely moving his lips.

Bucky flicked a glance at him. Then you play, he said. Maybe you don’t know how special your attention makes a man feel. But I do.

Gale fit a toothpick between his lips and didn’t answer. He counted two drinks, then made his way to the pool tables. He wasn’t alone long.

Now the man watched him when he thought Gale wouldn’t notice; while Gale chalked his cue, when he bent over the table and took his shots. There’d been another dimension to the world all along, Gale found himself thinking. Even men with rough hands and mouths took their looking where they could get it.

It felt dangerous, even if Gale wasn’t behaving any differently, wasn’t giving the man anything to go on. They’d barely even said anything to each other; that felt like part of it, somehow. Maybe it would’ve been like this. If Gale had found someone like himself, back when he was fresh out of high school and indoctrinated into the world of men. Maybe they wouldn’t have spoken, and Gale could’ve gotten what he didn’t know to ask for.

Gale lined up his last shot. The man stood a plausible distance behind him. Gale didn’t really care about winning, but there was satisfaction in knowing he could.

Afterward, he extricated himself with a nod and a handshake. The man’s hands were wide and calloused, notched with old scars and dark crescents of dirt or maybe oil beneath his nails. He looked surprised when Gale extended his hand. His face shifted to a proposition Gale hadn’t before known he could read.

His own face gave nothing back, and he wended between bodies back to where Bucky waited. He was long legs and an open, almost arrogant posture where he lounged at the bar. From his expression Gale knew he’d seen the whole thing.

“There’s my boy,” he said quietly, when Gale slid onto the barstool beside him. Then, at a normal volume: “Get what you needed?”

Gale nudged a fresh toothpick between his lips. If other men’s bodies and intentions were a language he was only newly versed in, John was something he knew before he had words for any of it.

Gale shrugged one shoulder, raised his eyes to Bucky’s and watched himself be understood.

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calling him jobless is frying me. and they’re right

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your prompt is ROLEPLAY

🫶

Behind him, Bucky heard Gale make a small sound in his throat, and it sounded like a caution.

Bucky put his pencil down. “Oh?”

“It’s not right.” Gale nodded at the paper. “Go back and refigure that last equation.”

It wasn’t right because ultimately Bucky didn’t give a damn. He batted his eyes at Gale. “Isn’t there any way you could help me out?”

Gale’s brow pinched. “If I help you now, you’ll never be able to do it on your own.”

“That’s just the thing.” Bucky pushed his chair back from their kitchen table, and spread his legs suggestively—or it would be a suggestion, if Buck cared to take it. He sighed as if put-upon, playacting the woebegone student. “I’m tired of doing it on my own.”

“Self-sufficiency is important.”

Bucky dropped a hand to his own thigh. He spread his fingers wide, just skirting where his dick lay against his thigh beneath the fabric of his pants. “Oh? You wanna see how self-sufficient I can be, Professor Cleven?”

He watched Gale exhale carefully through his nose. “I wanna see you finish your trig.”

Bucky’d been half-hard when Gale agreed to the charade, but being made to do actual math threatened to wilt his boner, and he was getting antsy.

“You’re gonna make me pass a quiz before I can come, aren’t you?” His sigh had real feeling behind it this time. He closed the textbook Gale loaned him. “Look, Gale, I don’t think—“

“If you need extra help,” Gale interrupted woodenly, “you can come to my office hours later tonight.”

Taking in the whole of him, Bucky saw that Gale’s posture was stiff, almost tense. His hands twitched at his sides. Bucky suppressed a grin. It was nice, in a way, to know that Gale wasn’t good at everything.

“Oh, Professor Cleven,” he said, widening his eyes. “It’s already so late… But I’m sure you know exactly what I need.”

Gale looked like he fought his own jaw to open his mouth. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “You’re a good student. You just need incentive.”

“Or punishment?” Bucky suggested breathily. It wasn’t the fun he expected, but watching Gale work so hard, and so badly, to give Bucky what he asked for was unexpectedly sweet. Bucky reached out a foot to rub at Gale’s ankle while dropping a bawdy wink.

“Yeah,” Gale said flatly, sounding exactly like himself for a moment. “Probably some punishment, too.”

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i can’t believe bucky goes through all that only for gale’s fuckass friend to show up outta nowhere and get introduced as knowing more about baseball than him like ummm i’ve been hallucinating games as a pastime so i don’t get myself killed and make buck sad. actually when i was shot out of the sky enemy soldiers combined my two fav topics—baseball and my boy best friend—into an incentive to get me to betray my fellow soldiers. also team sports is a private metaphor i use to bait gale into talking about his history and worldview while touching his lips very gently with my knuckles in a show of acceptable male bonding. anywayyyy nice to meet you, the cubs suck btw

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I think the 'Fruit Sniffer' will be big on here

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bucky cursed by a very specific vision from the future such that he’s left trying to explain party rock anthem to gale who keeps going whose house? whose house are these fellas in? bucky, what are you talking about?

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what would've happened if the guard had asked for /that/ in exchange of antibiotics when bucky was sick? would gale have done it? the angsttt of it all

this was a plot point i did consider actually but ultimately didn’t pursue. it felt like it would’ve required the fic be much longer to handle it with the proper focus while not taking over the entire plot.

i think, with no other alternatives left to him, that gale would’ve done it. in the short term it offers the chance for bucky’s survival. in the long term, it makes gale angrier, more isolated, and the quality of his silences are different in a way bucky can’t put a finger on, and it scares him.

(and maybe i’d have gale kill a guard, that guard or any guard, during their escape attempt and bucky is big eyed like holy shit gale but there’s no time to talk about it then, and gale doesn’t wanna talk about it after)

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Hi!! If you’re still taking drabble requests could i request some sort of caretaker Gale post-war? Futile devices is one of my favorite stories and Gale seemed so in character with his purposeful aloofness in interactions with Bucky (although we were privy to his desperation) and I’m so curious if his approach would change once they’re officially together? Thank you!!

:’) thank you sm for liking it, and for thinking of them!

Bucky found it hard to peel his eyes open, so for a long time he didn’t. There was someone in the room with him, he was pretty sure—was pretty sure it was Gale, but was fresh off dreams where it was always Gale, and so he couldn’t be certain this wasn’t just one more thing he wanted so bad he dreamed it up.

When he finally did open his eyes, he found Gale was cleaner than in his dreams, and better fed, and older, too. Bucky wasn’t sure he had the delicacy of imagination for the fine lines around Gale’s eyes and mouth, or the low-slung daylight through his hair. His vague frown of concentration Bucky knew by heart, however.

Gale looked up from his book when Bucky croaked out a noise. He pressed a sweating glass of water into Bucky’s hand, then helped him haul himself up just enough to sip from it. It ran down Bucky’s chin and he didn’t have the energy to care.

He drank what he could then lay back, feeling unduly winded. “You sitting up at my bedside?” he managed.

In lieu of an answer, Gale produced a thermometer. Bucky opened his mouth dutifully. Some commands he just took on instinct.

“You’re sick,” Gale said.

Bucky waited for the mercury to climb and settle before he spoke. “Yeah, I caught onto that.”

“Well, it’s only the third time we’ve had this conversation,” Gale said, eyeing the red line critically.

Bucky blinked at the gently spinning ceiling while Gale removed the thermometer. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. “I don’t remember that.”

The exhaustion in the set of Gale’s shoulders and the bags under his eyes suggested there was maybe a lot Bucky didn’t remember.

Bucky drew in a rattling breath that choked off into a coughing fit. It was a minute or so before he managed to ask, “Is it bad?”

“I can’t say it’s good.” Gale ran a hand down his tired face. “But your fever broke. Odds are good you’re gonna be okay.”

“‘Course I am.” Bucky’s confidence didn’t project as far as it should’ve, what with the gravel lining his throat and the muck in his lungs.

Gale was up and moving and didn’t answer. Bucky heard the tap run in the adjoining washroom. He came back with a cloth in hand, and wiped at Bucky’s face with it. Tender as it was, Gale was straight-faced through it. All the cracks of his feelings sealed up tight. Bucky knew then that it had been bad, all of what he couldn’t quite remember.

Gale unbuttoned the collar of Bucky’s sleep shirt to wipe down his neck. He was tacky with dried sweat, and over-hot. The wet cloth felt almost as good as Gale’s careful attention to the task.

“What got me?” Bucky asked.

Gale’s mouth went flat. His brow pinched faintly. It made him look older than his 40-odd years.

“Don’t tell me,” Bucky rasped, disbelieving.

“Your lungs scarred over from the last time,” Gale said. “We were told if you caught pneumonia again, it’d be worse.”

“But it’s not.” Bucky found it in himself to catch Gale’s wrist. “Hey, it’s not. We got medicine, and doctors, and if you called one they’d come. I’m okay.”

Gale’s brow didn’t smooth out as he considered. “Why’re you telling me this? You’re the one who looks like roadkill.”

Bucky grinned up at Gale. His incredulity worked like a balm. “Them’s kissing words,” he said in his barely-there voice.

“Believe me, they’re not.” But a smile threatened Gale’s mouth anyhow.

“Now that you know I’m the pinnacle of health, will get in this bed with me for a bit?”

“You’re the pinnacle of something, alright,” Gale said, but arranged himself carefully at Bucky’s side, like he were fragile somehow.

Gale’s warmth and solidity were distinct from the hot, sickly remains of Bucky’s fever. Bucky didn’t have the energy to curl up around him as he wanted to; but everything else in him already reached for Gale as a matter of habit, and met with ease and assurance.

Gale pushed the sweaty curls off Bucky’s forehead, and Bucky felt suddenly downstream of himself, halfway back to sleep already. He meant to ask something else, about how Gale had been sleeping, and eating, and had he seen the sun this week.

“Good that you’re here,” was what Bucky managed. He sought half-blind for Gale’s palm atop the covers and folded his own hand into it. “Thanks. I don’t know if I said it, the other time.”

“Twenty years ago, you mean?” Gale said. “I don’t remember if you did. I don’t need it anyway.”

“I do,” Bucky heard himself mumble, and caught a glimpse of Gale’s face, stricken and fond in his bleary vision, before ceding again to dreams.

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buckbucky sketch

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two sane bitches ❤️