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goldthorn-archive · 5 months ago

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absolutely insane thing to say as the author of The Cooler Fic but okay joey

Little angsty, pining!Gale fic

Sat down to right something and wrote this instead. I don't usually write anything that's not at least somewhat fluffy, but it's the mood I'm in lately, I guess. LOL. Sorry, I'll be out of my funk soon, hopefully!

Takes place in England, vague-timeline, but before Regensberg.

AO3 Link

“I was so busy this afternoon, I didn’t even have time to eat a thing. This wine will go straight to my head.”

Her voice is musical, her laugh bubbles after it in a charming cadence. John’s eyes crinkle at the corners and the skin of his face stretches with the force of the smile he directs at the woman nestled under his arm in the booth.

Gale had started his night nestled under that same arm, in that same booth.

John laughs with her, a quiet, fond chuckle, and tells her that food is an important thing to make time for. He pinches her chin between two fingers and makes her head move to where he wants it to go, whispers something in her ear that makes her cheeks flame and then he turns away to laugh at something Curt says. Gale’s palms are sweating.

Two days ago, after interrogation, John had watched him, concern heavy in his blue eyes, as Gale had pushed the food around his plate. He’d kicked him under the table and nodded at the untouched food in front of him when he’d drawn Gale’s gaze and then he’d lectured him on taking better care of himself on the walk back to barracks. He’d also given him a chocolate bar that he’d pretended to pull from behind Gale’s ear. And smiled at him with fondness in his eyes as Gale savored the entire thing, refusing even a bite for himself.

It made Gale feel important in a way not much else did, having John’s focus, his care. It made him feel too much and crave more. It was dangerous.

John hadn’t gone out that night. He’d stayed in with Gale when he’d said he needed a quiet evening and they’d played gin rummy and talked about everything except for the war. His attention hadn’t drifted from Gale once until they’d finally called it a night and gone to bed.

Gale had laid awake wondering if he would star in John’s dreams and then fallen asleep feeling foolish.

Now, Gale watches this beautiful woman watch John and he recognizes the look in her eyes. She wants his attention back on her, doesn't want to share it with the other airmen. He wishes he couldn’t relate.

“You know, I have a friend, still sippin’ her drink with the girls, waiting for a handsome pilot of her own.” She says the words too loud, but her goal is achieved as John’s head turns to follow the sound of her voice and just like that, she has John’s attention while Gale has everyone else’s.

She eyes Gale with a smile, red lipstick making her teeth look bright white. Gale wants to tell her that John isn’t hers. That last week it was a different woman sitting in her place and tomorrow it will probably be another. He keeps his face impassive.

He tries not to squirm even as he chooses to stay silent instead of outright balking at the idea of entertaining a woman all night. The pretending is harder to stomach than solitude. The toothpick in his mouth needs to be replaced. It’s too saturated and frayed from the extent he’s been worrying at it.

As always, John comes to his rescue.

“Buck here has a beautiful girl back home.”

He doesn’t.

“He won’t so much as dance with anyone that's not her.”

He says it like he always does, like he finds it endearing. Gale hates the way he wishes his voice held some kind of bitter emotion. But as always, it is just warm affection in his tone when Gale is the subject that colors his words. It had started making Gale’s chest flutter somewhere around the time of their first promotion.

And he’d desired that tone and the man it belonged too long before they were assigned to the 100th. Ignoring it hadn’t worked, so accepting it and letting it consume a part of him that would never be shared became the solution.

It's why he broke it off with Marge before shipping out, though he didn’t tell John that. Didn’t tell anyone that. She still writes to him, still wants to be his friend, and it’s easy for the men to draw the conclusion that he is loyal to a sweetheart back home.

The woman under John’s arm rolls her eyes and then forgets about Gale immediately.

She’s laughing at all of his jokes.

Even when John pulls out his best material, Gale makes sure to give him nothing more than a smile. He’s been unable to help himself and has allowed soft huffs of quiet laughter on occasions that are becoming less rare. But Gale has never given him a full bellied laugh.

Maybe he should have. He knows it’s a goal of John’s, to make Gale smile, to make him laugh.

She’s touching his chest, the side of neck.

Gale allows himself to be touched by John. Not at first. Physical contact hadn’t been a part of his life in a positive way before he met John. It took a lot to get to the point where his best friend’s method of expressing friendship didn’t make him want to recoil, didn’t make him flinch. It took a lot, but it didn’t take a long time. By the third week in flight school, he was craving the soft touches and starting to hate himself a little for it.

He hardly ever initiates the contact himself. He’ll give John’s shoulder a squeeze. Let his hand linger in his grasp for too long when they greet each other.

Maybe things would be different if he let himself touch with the freedom in which John did. But affection was something he soaked up like a sponge when it was from John and wilted at when it was from others. And it was something he’d never learned how to give or take. Thinks maybe John could teach him but he knows he’ll never ask him to.

But things wouldn’t be different.

Because he watches John’s hand trail from her shoulder, down her back and to her hip, fingertips grazing the soft curve of her body on its way down. He watches John smile into her hair and whisper something into her ear again that makes her cheeks flush to match her lipstick and then nuzzle behind her ear. He looks away as John’s fingers trail the hem of her skirt.

And he imagines doing that to Marge or the girl across the room and all it does is turn his stomach.

So, nothing would be different if he were able to touch freely or laugh loudly. He’s different and John’s not, so he’ll settle it all back down in his chest and try to think about all of it less.

But he doesn’t have to torture himself by watching where this night will lead his best friend, so he slides out of the booth and heads to the bar to pay.

“What’s got you so glum, Buck?” Everett Blakely’s effusively kind voice sounds off as Gale pockets his change and he gives the other man a raised eyebrow.

“Pretty sure this is just what my face looks like, Everett.”

“Nah, sometimes you smirk a bit.” Everett grins at him. “Besides, it’s all in the eyes, and you’ve got sad eyes tonight, Major.”

“Think we’re all entitled to bad nights once in a while, given the circumstances.” Gale plucks a fresh toothpick from his pocket to replace the one he’d ruined, catches John leading the woman onto the dancefloor and can’t help but follow his movements with his eyes.

He wishes he was normal enough that the lives of the twenty men they’d lost two days ago was what was twisting his insides. Instead, it’s watching his best friend do a perfectly normal thing - flirt and twirl a girl around. Both realities of his reasons for hurting live heavy in his chest, like they’re located in different chambers, blessing him with the opportunity to feel different types of agony instead of just your average layer of pain.

“Gonna head out,” he says, nodding at Blakely, who lifts his glass in response.

John is in rare form this evening, giving up on dancing quickly and already guiding the girl towards the back door without a glance in Gale’s direction.

Because he’s normal. And normal men don’t think about their best friends when there’s a pretty girl hanging on their arm.

Bucky probably expects Gale to be waiting for him when he’s finished. Waiting to walk back together at the end of the night.

Or maybe he’s not thinking anything at all about Gale.

He’s the first one back. He’s always the first one back.

The shower room is vacant, and he takes his time, but he’s still alone when he makes his way back into the barracks. He’s still alone when he changes into his sleep clothes and lays in his cot.

And he is still alone an hour later when sleep refuses to sink her claws into him and drag him to some kind of relief.

Men slowly stumble in, and Gale closes his eyes, giving the illusion of slumber. He listens to the nightly routines of the men around him as they prepare for sleep, actions audibly clumsier than most nights in their inebriated states.

But drunken movements disturbing a quiet room are something Gale’s been hearing since he was a boy, so he finds them familiar and ignores the way they make his stomach tighten unpleasantly in anticipation.

More time paces, everyone settled into bed and Gale still can’t sleep.

Shuffling footsteps, intentionally quiet in their movements are the only thing that alerts him to John’s return. His cot is within arm’s reach of Gale’s own, but he’d thought it would remain empty tonight. The feeling of satisfaction that bubbles up in him is ugly and bitter, but he lets it boil under his skin as John returns to his side in the end.

Heavy, scratchy wool glides up the length of his torso until it rests under his chin. Strong hands tuck it under his shoulder blades and his hips. He tries to keep his breathing deep, feigning the same familiar pattern of sleep he listens to from John’s bunk each night to lull himself to sleep. A moment later, calloused fingers brush the product-less bangs off his forehead and run through the length of his hair.

The tender gesture almost forces his eyes open. That aching, craving hunger for more of what John will give him is a living thing in his chest. Those fingers ghost over his hair one more time and Gale uses every bit of strength in himself not to push up into the touch, not to whine when it’s gone.

He hears John let out a sigh that sounds mournful and he doesn’t understand what any of it means.

As John moves, most likely to turn away, Gale can smell her perfume.

If he opened his eyes he’d probably see her lipstick stained on his mouth, his neck. Knows with a gut-wrenching certainty that it’s probably stained in more intimate places, and he wishes John wasn’t too drunk to go take a shower.

Wishes it wouldn’t linger on him. Wishes it wasn’t on him at all. Doesn’t want to see the red of her lips on John’s when the new day dawns.

Imagines if it had been him under John’s arm leaving the pub, there wouldn’t even be a visible trace of him in the aftermath.

He’d be forgettable, inconsequential. Easy to forget. Easy to regret.

He keeps his eyes closed and wishes John hadn’t come back at all. Is so glad that he did.

A softly whispered “goodnight, Buck.” is breathed into the stale air of the barracks, and Gale lays awake for a long time after John’s breathing evens out into sleep, wishing he could join him in more ways than one.

#c recommends #everything joey writes tbh #mota fic #mota fanfic #clegan

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