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antigonenikk · 2 days

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an ode to the color red

fandom: masters of the air, band of brothers

pairing: marjorie spencer/ronald speirs, marjorie spencer/gale cleven, gale cleven/john ‘bucky’ egan

warnings: crossover, grooming, child abuse, murder, cheating, daddy issues, smut, period typical homophobia, major character death

summary: “There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.” -Mary Shelley

"“Call me Daddy.”

Again. He freezes. Eyes wide with desire.

“Say it. Say it.”

She’s going to scream in his face until her skin is just as red as her brain. She is going to destroy him. She wants it like this. Bucky is Gale’s Daddy. And Marge is Bucky’s. And Marge’s is Ron. Like one chain link fence, unending with the weight of its betrayal."

1945

She discovers them by accident. The wedding is still three weeks away. They’ve decided on a blue and white theme. Which…. Marge doesn’t like the color blue but Gale does. And her Father does. And so it’s okay. Really.

In actuality, Marge doesn’t want a big wedding. She wants to elope, like Mary Shelley did with Percy, and go on a tour of the Continent, and write poetry while her husband tries to drown himself on the Mediterranean Coast. But with the war that dream has become an impossibility.

And really, who is Marge kidding. It was always an impossibility. Sometimes she wishes the librarians never gave her such free reign as a child. Then she wouldn’t have been so influenced by the Romantics, Joyce and Shelley and Byron. Maybe then Casper, Wyoming and its barren hills and her high school sweetheart would fill her with love. The type of love she’s supposed to feel for the things that have been so good to her. Because they have. Or. She thought they had.

She met Gale when they were ten years old. Her Father had taken the belt to her hard the night before, and had dragged her along to the race track, where she sat uncomfortably on her hands, her knees crossed ladylike, trying not to wince. Beside her a little boy sat down. Three years older, maybe. He was skinny and underfed and wearing the ugliest suspenders. But he offered to play marbles with her on the grass, and sat with her for hours until their fathers came to get them, roaring drunk and laughing together. No one had ever spent so much time looking after her. After that it was a done deal. She was his creature. Handed over like a piece of worn silverware. There was no Marge. No Gale. Just MargeandGale. If you wanted one, you asked for the other.

At first it was nice. And she liked it when Gale decided on what she should wear, and what she should think, and what she should eat. It was very easy as a little girl to let someone else take the lead. And Gale loved to take the lead. Gale wanted certain things out of her. He did not want her to read her gothic stories. He thought they were morbid. He did not want her to drink, or talk with “loose girls” from school, or climb trees in Old Mr. Jenkin’s farms for apples. He wanted her to be a good person, with firm morals, who never slipped, and was always modest. He kissed her. And he would touch her, as they grew older and she grew into her prettiness. But never anything under the blouse. It was frustrating. She didn’t know what she wanted. She didn’t know how to put it into words. Only that it was wild and it was the color red and it flew from the ancient Oak trees and would not leave her at peace.

Marge wanted to lose her virginity against a gravestone. A feeling that only intensified when her Mother died. Just like Mary Shelley. She wanted to be Mary, have everything she had. Her horrors and small griefs and immense talent. She wanted to lose her virginity on her mother’s gravestone, just like Mary did with Percy. But she was no Mary. She was mediocre. A bad writer. A worse piano player. A passable seamstress. And Gale was no Percy. He had no romantic ambitions, or love of history. He wanted an easy life. And so it was fine. She would finally, in three weeks, after years of waiting and waiting and crying and wringing her hands, she would finally have him inside of her. It would be worth it. She would prove to herself once and for all that she loved him. Him, and not… Well. The point was moot. She wasn’t at Georgia State anymore. The war was over. She was back in her little cage, and she had made peace with what she had to give up, what she wanted to give up. She stopped thinking about it. Stop thinking about it, Marge. The voice that reprimanded her sounded like Gale’s. It always did. Ever since she was ten years old.

But then she found them. They were in the barn, Gale’s barn, the one that had gone empty since his Father’s passing. She found them there, doing unnatural things to each other. Bucky, who she had thought was so handsome and charming when he breezed into town three days ago, was on his knees. His head to Gale’s… she didn’t even know you could do that. No one had told her you could do that. And Gale, with his head tilted back, was letting out little groans. She felt sick. It wasn’t right. She had given up so much. Had given eleven years to this man. She had given up her childhood home. She had taken care of the house while doing her homework after school, staying up all night to make sure her grades were good enough for him. She had sat in those pews for hours every Sunday. Hot and sour with resentment. She watched as he came down his Best Friend’s throat. She didn’t feel like crying. Really. Instead, inside her head, she started to feel a bit funny. Like she wanted to laugh. It was almost like she was Jane Eyre, really. And her evil Mr. Rochester had revealed his hidden secret at last. And then Gale whispered the word “Daddy,” and Marge had to run on silent feet back to the main house, stifling her laughter.

To think she had ever respected this man. Ever took his word for law. The type of man who called another man Daddy…

That night she lay in bed and contemplated her options. Back when Gale shipped off for flight school, when she was Seventeen, he had allowed her to apply for colleges. She had chosen Georgia State. It was in the south, like where Faulkner lived. But it was also in a big city. So she could run around, pretending to be Sonia from Crime and Punishment, doing her hair up in a bun, looking through book stores and writing poetry and drinking whiskey. And she could make friends. Real girlfriends.

______________

1942

Atlanta was hot. And humid. And the girls in her class were nice, but distant. Except of course for Birdie. Birdie wasn’t her real name. They had been assigned roommates at the beginning of term. And Marge had never been so glad of anything in her entire life. Birdie was a Fine Arts major, who desperately wanted to be a painter like Kathe Kollwitz. She had horrific black and white lithographs hung up all over their room, and Marge adored them. The hulking faces, the wide eyed starving children, the grieving mothers. They were incredible. Birdie’s really name, which they never mentioned after first introductions, was Dove. Her eight year old brother had been allowed to name her. A decision the family realized in retrospect was a grave mistake. But she had come out with white blonde hair and blue eyes and looked nothing like her Mother, so she had been handed off to a frightened eight year old boy to do with as he saw fit.

Their pasts, it felt like, were interlocked. Both of them growing up under the thumb of an older man. Except Dove’s brother was only ever half there. His presence was more an absence than anything else. Just like Marge’s parents. She was allowed to run free, reading and painting and lighting off fireworks. But like Marge her brother never let her have any real fun. No boys, no drinking, no dancing unless he was there to supervise. The two of them had pooled together their courage and decided they would make a break for it on their first weekend there, under the close watchful eye of the boarding house’s owner.

Their first stop was to a jazz club. The kind of thing that they would never be allowed to do back home. Best to rip the band-aid of rebellion off fast and with violence. They walked in, and it was like the whole world fell away. It was smoky, and loud. Marge had been to a dinner club once, the night before Gale shipped out. But that was nothing like this. The place was filled to the brim with soldiers of all sorts. Laughing and screaming and making fools of themselves. The two of them stood there for a moment, grabbing at each other, desperately nervous about looking silly. And then Marge felt a tap on her shoulder. And the rest was history.

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1945

In between the silverware which she hid under her floorboards, Marge kept his letters. They were all there. Some of them, torn and ashen from when she had half burned them after Gale’s return from the Stalag. She had thought. She had thought Gale was as good as dead. That was her excuse. The type of excuse even she didn’t put much faith in. She never thought he would get out. And then he did. And the silverware, and the looted Nazi flag, and the letters, and the slip with his phone number all went under the floorboards. She pulled out each letter, and set them in front of her in a circle. Ronnie would never call another man Daddy. That she was sure of. And there was no way he would give a damn about fucking her against her Mother’s headstone. God knows when she had brought the idea up to him, after her Mother had first died, he had gotten a hungry look in his eye. The sort of look that made her forget all about the nasty little tricks he liked to play on her. Or the way he got cold and mean and distant when she wanted to talk about her feelings. Or the way he would stare at her without blinking, like a hunter closing in on some sort of helpless prey. Well. Let him. She thought. He kept saying he wanted to steal her away. Kept raising the ante with more and more lavish gifts as he worked his way through Europe, leaving a trail of corpses behind him. Let him prove that he wasn’t all talk after all.

In the dead of the night she dialed his number. It rang once, twice, three times. He picked up.

“Speirs.”

“Ronnie…”

She felt like Catherine maybe, calling Heathcliffe home. Or like Jane Eyre still, returning to Rochester, finding the castle all in ruins. Only she was going to be the one to finish the job of burning it down.

He told her, as she put on the waterworks, that he would be there in two days. They would fix things. Together. Of course she couldn’t marry an invert. Of course she couldn’t be expected to carry the burdens of his sins. Marge didn’t care much about sin. Not in the way she should. Not even a sin like inversion. But the words were soothing excuses. The type that she could force herself this time to believe. She was very good at that. Forcing a belief down her throat until it tasted like the truth. Really, she just wanted Gale dead and fucking gone. It didn’t matter what it took to get there. For a second, she hesitated. Then she calmed her breathing, and listening to the rustling of the trees, and realized there was no other way out but through.

______________

1942

It’s New Year's Eve, and Marge’s Mother is dead. It’s New Year's Eve, and Birdie’s boyfriend is about to ship off. So she’s moping in her room, drawing sketches of dead dogs and crying about the fact that he doesn’t love her enough to marry her. She knows she could tell her friend about the death. And Birdie would drop everything. And they would hold each other and smoke bad reefer and fall asleep in each other’s arms. But she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want it to be real. To say it out loud…Marge is restless.

Ron is leaving soon. And their little game is coming to a close. Him. Taking her dancing when he’s on liberty at every bar in town, spinning her in his arms until she’s dizzy. Him. Listening as she rambles on about Keats and Byron and how romantic double-suicide must feel, nodding along. Agreeing with her completely. They are of the same mind somehow. Everything she feels about the world, he feels twice as strongly. She tells him she thinks the painting Birdie showed her of St. Thomas poking Jesus’ holy wound is the most beautiful thing in the world. He agrees, and leans forward, and goes on a diatribe about the erotic connotations of penetration, talking about some analyst named Freud. And wouldn’t Marge want to read him? The offer of it. Knowledge freely given is a high unlike anything she has ever experienced.

She opens the book he lends her that night and starts laughing. Two years past due from a library in the Northeast. What a little thief. She tells him that if she got married, she would follow her husband to Siberia, just like Sonia did. Even if he killed an old lady in cold blood? He asked. Especially then. Killing doesn’t bother her. It should. But if it’s done for the right reasons….Killing doesn’t seem to bother him either. The same red that flows in her from the those old Oak trees rests inside of him, bubbling up and over through his ears and eyes. Wrapping them both in string, tied about the middle, unable to escape.

That night, with two Sazeracs between them, he tells her about Carthage, and about Alcibiades, who rode into battle holding only a golden shield with the image of Eros, God of desire, on it. She can’t stand it. Grief and desire fight each other inside her stomach, each one intensifying the other. You’re sick. Gale’s voice says to her. She imagines Ron to block the thought out, naked and broad muscled, holding up a gold shield, bloody and broken by arrows, and squirms in her seat. When she opens her eyes he’s staring at her again, odd and still, like a snake waiting to bite. He lights her cigarette as she tries not to cry. And he talks about what it means to have a true warrior’s spirit. And she begins to understand what it’s like to be understood. Birdie, for all that she loves her, is too sweet to withstand the idea of killing. Relentless violence frightens her in a way it does not frighten Marge.

The game is up though. She knows this as she half listens to him, the smoke making him look hazy. And the late night conversations and the absinthe and the music and the laughter. It’s all gone up in flames. She owes so much to Gale. Her whole life, really. She can’t abandon him now. But, she figures. Ron is going away. And he’s so sure he’s going to die. It won’t hurt to keep writing to him.

Right?

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1945

Marge has a plan. Before Ronnie arrives, she wants to have her own fun. She wants to prove to him that he’s nothing. Gale, that is. She realized, last night, after hanging up the phone, that she had loved him. For the gentle curve of his face. For his air of desperation. For the odd sense she always got from him that he was meant to die young and beautiful, leaving her a pretty widow with a big house and haunted memories of her first love. Stupid little girl ideas.

But he had betrayed her. Had betrayed her sacrifice. The destruction she undertook of any sort of real personality she held inside of herself in honor of him, of the sacrifices he took to raise her and put a roof over her head. And so, she was going to prove that even his Daddy could be stolen from him, just in the same way he had stolen her from her own Father. The way she had been given over, like a piece of day old garbage. Again. Gale’s voice. Always in her ear. Red kept growing. It never stopped. Sometimes, she thought. Sometimes killing could be right.

She catches Bucky alone that morning, sitting on the patio, white shirt stretched over his muscled chest. She won’t let him fuck her. But she’s willing to do just about anything else.

She slides up to him, pouring him a lemonade. Putting on her best smile.

“Here you go.”

He looks up to her, smiling with what she now realizes is a smug superiority, mingled with hazy lust. He thinks he’s won. She wants to claw his little blue eyes out.

He takes the drink from her, and swigs it down.

“Thank you kindly, sweetheart.”

“No problem, Daddy.”

He whips his face back up to her. She can see the shock there clear as day. Sad, and lonely, and hunted. He cracks a grin. It’s fake. She’s good at telling a fake grin.

“What?” He croaks out.

She slides into his lap, as easy as pie.

“What?” She parrots back.

He seems confused. Poor baby. She puts her arms around his neck, leaning in to whisper in his ear.

“I don’t think it’s very fair. Do you? That you’re Gale’s Daddy, but not mine.”

She can feel him growing hard underneath her. He reaches up, looking torn, like he might push her to the floor. Like he might rip her clothes off right there and fuck her in the open like an animal.

“Marge. I…”

“I don’t mind. I don’t mind, really.”

She kisses his neck. And imagines he is another dark haired, broad chested man.

“I don’t mind it, but I don’t want to be left out. You understand?”

He groans, grinding himself into her. She straddles him, slipping his hand inside her the front of her dress, until she can feel his large palm cupping the entirety of her breast.

“Do you feel it? My heart?”

He grabs her then, like a dog longing for its master. He grinds up into her, fabric on fabric. It’s the most she’s ever done with a man. And she doesn’t like it. Instead she sinks to her knees, opening the fly of his pants, placing her mouth on him like she saw him do to Gale.

He grabs ahold of her hair, tugging too tight, and fucks into her mouth.

“Jesus…fuck…fucking whore–”

She grabs his balls then, just a touch too hard, hard enough to make him freeze with pain. If she kept squeezing. What then? If she never stopped? But the rage leaves her, or rather, it grows cold. She pulls off of him. Him, her willing captive.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

She knows what he thinks about her. Luckily for him it doesn’t matter. She sucks him down again, her jaw aching with pressure. He places his hands back in her hair, hesitant this time. She goes at it for what feels like an hour, until he starts panting hard, choking out,

“I’m gonna–”

She pulls off, and grabs him by the base. She wants something out of him first.

“Please. Marge, please. Sweetheart. I’ll do anything.”

“Call me Daddy.”

Again. He freezes. Eyes wide with desire.

“Say it. Say it.”

“Daddy. Daddy, fuck.”

She puts her mouth back on him, and he’s coming hard, his body curling over her head, face scrunched up in agony.

She gets up when he’s done, holding the bitter tang in her mouth, and spits it into his glass of lemonade. He watches her like he’s seen a ghost as she straightens her clothes, fixes her lipstick in the sliding glass door, and heads back inside. Ten hours until Ronnie arrives. She has to run to the hardware store.

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1944

My Percy, I’m so sorry. I can’t do it anymore. Gale has been captured by Germans. I can’t stand the thought, even in my head, of being so disloyal to him when he’s this close to death. It was never going to last. Don’t wait for me. I feel lost and alone. The dorm rooms are so empty. I’m afraid sometimes. That I’m a bad person. For the thoughts I have. Something inside of me is broken. Some cog doesn’t turn correctly. The hands of the watch have all stopped moving and I’m stuck in a world I don’t understand, which does not understand me. Please forget about me. Your Mary

______________

1945

He drives up to the house around two in the morning. Marge is in her room, sleeping next to Gale, the same way she has since she was fifteen and her Father and Mother decided it would be best if she moved up to the Cleven’s. After all, his parents had just died, and he was eighteen now, and they would be married soon anyways. She remembers the last time she went to the Casper library was the day before she moved in officially.

She can sense that he’s on the property. She gets up, slowly, and on tip toes walks down the stairs to the front door. He’s waiting there for her. His eyes shadowed in the dark night. Marge has done her part already. She put the sleeping pills in their drinks, crushed and hidden under the tang of gingerale and whiskey. Now they’re both in separate rooms, dead to the world.

“Where is he?”

She takes his hard hand in hers, and leads him back up the stairs. The night is dark and gloomy. She imagines that instead of the boring plains of Casper that it’s the moors of the Scottish Highlands that stretch for three acres in each direction. This kind of house, well, there’s no one here to hear you scream in this kind of house. She knows. She’s done enough screaming in this house to last a lifetime. And no one, until now, had ever come.

He approaches their bed, unmade, and leans over Gale’s sleeping face. She realizes that Ron is seeing him for the first time. She had made sure, before, to never wear any sort of locket with his picture in it. She can’t tell what Ronnie is thinking, but she watches with rapture as he reaches his hands out and drops a pillow over Gale’s face. She had thought…maybe a gun, or…well. This way was better. Less interesting. But better. Easier to explain.

She can tell when Gale wakes up. He starts thrashing. Slowly at first, then like a fish out of water begging for air. The only word banging around her head is “Daddy.” Daddy Daddy Daddy DADDY. As if he hadn’t been her Daddy for years and years. Even when she betrayed him, going out on little dates with Ron, writing him love letters. Even then it was all Gale in the end. Ruler of her heart and her brain. Taking up room he had carved out for himself inside of her. In the end it was always supposed to be the two of them. GaleandMarge. Now. Now she was just going to be Marge. Marge alone. With Ron two steps ahead, cold and hard edged and filled with anger. She feels afraid of the future.

Out of the corner of her eye there’s movement. Quick as anything, Bucky bounds into the room, stumbling over himself, vertigo drawing on the drugs to make him as clumsy as a newborn deer. Marge screams. This wasn’t part of the plan. Ron doesn’t panic. Not even when Bucky reaches out and grabs her by the throat, tossing her into the wardrobe. She lands hard, and is reminded of her own Father, his hulking size, his tempestuous anger. She understands for a brief moment what Gale sees in him.

Then the noise like a firecracker. Bang. And Bucky drops. She looks up from the red. Up and up and up. Ron stands there, pistol in hand, like a God of death. She loves him. She needs him. She is deathly afraid. He turns, returns to the bed, and checks Gale’s pulse. He places the gun in Gale’s hand, wiping it off with a handkerchief. She clings to his back, pressing desperate little kisses along the back of his neck, clinging like a sea urchin.

He holds her close, turning her around, mouth pressing to hers, squeezing her so tight she can’t breath. He doesn’t check the bleeding she can feel at the back of her head from when she knocked into the dresser. That’s okay though.

“You’re not leaving me again. Not again. It’s finished.”

She nods. Where else would she go now?

He takes her hand and leads her down the stairs and into the car and out onto the rough paved roads.

“Where?”

She knows what he means before he even finishes asking.

“Take a left.”

It takes them twenty minutes to get there. The anticipation is killing her. He parks the car, and giddy like a school girl she drags him along, pulling her nightgown over her head. Laughing. This is what freedom feels like. Like fresh air from the pitch black night on your naked breasts.

They reach the gravestone and he’s on her immediately. His hands wander, up and down, grasping her breasts and her naked thighs, wanting to touch every at once, wanting to consume her.

“Daddy…”

She whispers it to him, and something seems to snap. He tosses her down onto the dirt, the back of her head hitting the gravestone. She starts to bleed even more. Red everywhere. She feels behind her and touches the engraved letters of her Mother’s name. Red in the air. He stays clothed, but shucks his wool coat, his tie, places himself above her, knees in the wet dirt, biting at her neck until she cries out in pain. He touches her, but not gently.

“It’s finished. You understand? You’re not getting away from me again. Not even another war. Not even another continent is going to stop me from getting to you.”

The words should scare her, but they don’t. She’s used to being owned. At least Ron is good at it. He keeps his stolen things close to the chest, treating them like a magpie. He guards his nest. He would sooner kill her before he let her touch another man. And he lets her do what she wants. All of that. It makes her love him more than she can stand. Her mind might belong to Gale. It might always belong to him. But her body, her heart, her soul. Those she can give away as she chooses.

He slides into her, and it hurts unlike anything she’s ever felt before. She grabs at the stone behind her, bending her back to get away. But she can’t. The pain and pleasure are mixing. She can feel herself bleeding down into the Earth. She’s finally gotten what she wanted. Finally. A sigh of relief escapes her, fluttering her eyes closed. All around her, inside of her, is him. Warm and dark. From him to her, from the Oak trees that surround them like a canopy. Red flows out of her into the night. She screams out a long, loud laugh. He smiles into her neck, biting even harder. She wants to live the rest of her life just like this.

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eternallytired17 · 29 days

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I have written detailed outlines for each of these prompts, yet I simply cannot decide for the life of me which one to pursue first...

#fanfiction #masters of the air #mota #fanfic #gale cleven #john egan #buck x bucky #bucky x buck #clegan #bridgerton #bridgerton s3 #john bucky egan #gale buck cleven #helen from masters of the air #marjorie spencer #ao3 writer #ao3 #ao3 fanfic

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reiderwriter · 11 months

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Request for some slow and sensual soft!dom Spencer

bonus points for a gentle breeding kink or cockwarming

mega bonus points for both

Hi, anon. Thanks for feeding into my soft!Dom Spencer delusions 💀 Not sure if it's very slow or sensual because I got a bit carried away (2k words level carried away) but I hope you enjoy nonetheless!

Summary: You want attention from your boyfriend, but he wants to read his book. You decide to meet in the middle.

Warnings: (18+ Minors DNI) cockwarming, breeding kink, bdsm themes, pet names, degradation, ruined O, etc.

Here's my masterlist - requests are open 💕

It was a slow saturday and you were just thankful to have some time together with your boyfriend of three years after a particularly tiring case.

You were only too happy to accept the early leave on the friday night to spend some time with Spencer, but now you were sat quite alone and frustrated in your bed on a saturday morning. Spencer had been particularly excited about discovering a rare edition of a Marjorie Kempe book, and had immediately taken up on the couch to read the second the two of you got into his house.

And you knew now that he was purposely messing with you, because he had never taken longer than 3 hours to read anything, much less a book that he had been more than familiar with since birth. For the majority of friday night, you’d sat opposite him on his couch, just watching him read.

You weren’t exactly opposed to watching the beautiful man for a few hours but the more it became clear he was toying with you, the more impatient for his attention you were. He liked to do this from time to time, show you that you were only getting what you wanted on his time. Sometimes you were convinced that he wanted you to beg. Hell, sometimes you did beg.

This time, though, you were determined to wait him out. To make him snap first.

You’d made it twelve hours.

Even the night before, when you’d put on one of his shirts to sleep in, he’d kissed you on the cheek and wished you a good night, waiting until you were asleep to come to bed.

When you’d woken up in the morning, he was showering. You’d made to join him, but he turned the water off almost as soon as you’d turned the door handle, and then looked at you with such an innocent smile. “Morning, sweetie. Just give me a few minutes to finish up here and it’ll be all ready for you.”

You’d gotten out of the shower and walked around his apartment for five whole minutes in the smallest towel you could find, and not once could you feel his eyes on you. He was driving you crazy.

“Spencer.” You frowned a little, trying to get his attention once more.

“Mhm?”

“Spencer, put the book down.”

“Why would I do that?” You couldn’t see his face, but you could hear the smirk in his voice, the knowledge that he was making you frustrated increasing his pleasure ten-fold.

“Because you read at a speed of like 20,000 words per minute and you’ve been reading that book for twelve hours and it is not that long. Spencer, please.” You moved in front of him now, water stick running down your back, and you had one last idea to get him to finally pay attention to you.

So you dropped the towel, and then stood there embarrassed as he finally, unbearably slowly, lifted his eyes from his book to your face.

“Oh baby. Was there something you wanted?” He smiled again, but his eyes didn’t waver from yours and you almost resigned yourself to picking up the towel again and retreating to the bedroom, but you didn’t.

“You know what I want.” You grumbled.

“I’m not a mind-reader, baby, you have to use your words.” You flushed red at the thought. He knew you weren’t good at this, telling him exactly what you wanted, but you’d needed him from the second you’d followed him into his house and by now you were almost desperate.

“I want you,” you breathed out shakily, his eyes still intensely gazing at you, “I want you to fuck me, now. Please.” You added the final word as an almost involuntary after thought, so used to begging him now that it was second nature.

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” He shifted his book into one of his hands, but made no move to put it down, simply pulling down the tops of his sweatpants enough to pull out his semi-erect cock, giving it a few strokes. You practically salivated looking at it, happy to know that your ministrations weren’t exactly fruitless after all.

“Come here, baby.” He said, motioning for you to climb onto his lap. You did so eagerly, but still unsure if he was going to give you exactly what you wanted.

“Now I want you to sit here, prettily on my cock, like the needy little princess you are. And when I finish reading my book, I’m going to give you the attention you’ve been begging for all night, okay sweetheart?” You groaned in frustration.

“But Spence-” He cut you off quickly.

“What, such a little whore that you can’t even wait politely for half an hour while I finish what I’m doing?” You bit back any other complaints and quickly climbed into his lap, your back pressed against his chest, hands gripping his hard thigh beneath you.

You gave him a few quick pumps, feeling him grow harder and longer and perfectly hot before you lined his tip up with your hole and slowly sunk yourself down on him.

“Perfect, princess. Now, you know the rules. No moving until I tell you you can, okay?” He pressed a kiss to the top of your hair and wrapping his free hand around your waist before opening his book again. You almost spat out another involuntary complaint again when you saw that he was starting from the beginning.

The two of you sat there, with you warming his cock, desperate for any friction, and him pleasantly reading his medieval poetry, ignoring the fact that you were even there.

Each time he’d move to turn the page you’d watch the veins in his arms strain with the effort of using only one hand. Thankfully, he wasn’t purposefully reading slowly anymore, but that meant that you’d twitched a few times without meaning to at the sheer sight of him. Each time you did, his grip on your hip tightened again and he’d rolled his hips agonisingly slowly, as if he weren’t even trying to disturb you while providing you with the tiniest relief before stilling himself once again.

At the half-way point of his book, his hand released his grip on your waist.

“Such a good girl, making a mess on my pants for me,” he whispered into your ear again, by now you were panting with need, your head thrown back against his shoulder as you did your best not to move. “Remember the rules, okay baby?”

He moves his hands down to your clit and start rubbing circles into it, slowly and gently. And now you’re whimpering into him, trying your best not to move whilst your orgasm builds up in your stomach, frustration building knowing that if you do try to get more relief, his hands will be off you in an instant.

“Spence, please.” You’re a mess now, mouth hanging open, so caught between agony and bliss that you have to force yourself to breathe, pushing out gasps in time with his languishing movements.

“I’m not finished baby, you’re going to have to be patient. You can do that for me, can’t you?” He whispers in your ear, the feeling on his breath on your neck sending you crazy.

“Spence please, I need to….”

“You need to wait, like a good little girl. I’ll be done soon.”

“But Spencer, I’m gonna c-cum,” as you say the words your hips jerk forward involuntarily, and you don’t stop yourself from continuing the movement, chasing the high as you feel your orgasm so close.

“Oh, my needy little baby couldn’t have waited two more minutes? Only had ten pages left.” He lifts his hand off of your hot centre, and grabs your hips, immediately stilling your movements and ruining your orgasm.

“Please, please Spencer..please,” you’re unable to do anything but beg as he holds you on his cock, not moving, not letting you move, not saying anything. You know you’ve broken the rules, but you’re so drunk on his cock that you don’t even care about the consequences right now.

Finally, he puts his book down, and shifts your weight evenly between both of his hands.

“My needy little baby needed me this much?” He punctuated his question with a quick snap of his hips into yours before stilling his movements once again. You moan and the breath leaves your chest, unable to speak or even let out any other sound in reply.

“Needed me this badly, huh?” He does it again, and you feel his dick twitch inside of you.

“Tell me, baby. What should I do? It seems my baby doesn’t want to leave my lap but I need to cum.” He picks up a steady pace now and your whole body is throbbing with him, so much so that you almost miss his insinuation.

“What’s your choice, baby? Tell me in words or I’ll stop this right now.” You moan again, pushing back into him as he thrusts up into you.

“Don’t stop, Spencer. I want all of you inside.” You finally manage to get out, and his hands are back on your clit in an instant, picking up exactly where they left off.

“That’s my girl. Take it all in, okay? You can do that for me?” He keeps whispering into your ear, letting you know how well you’re doing for him, how well you have behaved, how nicely you waited, how much he’s going to give you.

“Spencer, I’m-” you’re gasping again now, and you can’t quite force out the words, but he understands.

“I know, baby, you’re doing such a great job. You can let go now, let me take care of the rest.” Your body complies quickly, and your blissful release finally comes. Your energy quickly leaves you and you melt back into Spencer’s chest, his arms holding you softly as he presses small kisses to your cheeks and exposed neck.

“You did a great job, baby. So good for me. Gonna give you everything I’ve got, gonna put it all inside you.” His thrusts start losing their rhythm as he nears his end, each movement sending sparks up your spine as you feel yourself getting over-stimulated. You know you’re going to be a whole lot more sore that you want to be if this goes on any longer, so you decide to help him over the edge.

“Fuck yes, Spencer, put a baby in me, fill me up nice and good.”

He moans instantly in your ear as he shoots inside of you, his strong grip on your hips loosening just enough for you to know that he’s definitely left bruises there. The two of you sit in companionable silence for what feels like forever whilst your heart beat returns to a normal pace.

Eventually, he pulls you off his lap, and quickly makes his way to the bathroom. You hear him start the water running for a bath, and when he returns, he has a wet towel ready to clean you up.

“I know you already showered, baby, but you’re gonna need this to relax your muscles and make you feel better okay?” He smiles down at your wrecked form on the couch, and you smile lazily back, thankful for the beautiful man in front of you.

“Hey Spencer,” you say after he’s finished cleaning up your shared mess. “Next time, I don’t think I’ll have to wait as long for you.”

“What makes you say that?” He smiles down at you, but you can see the backs of his ears going red as he runs his hand through his hair.

“Well you certainly seemed excited by the idea of breeding me, so I think in the future I’ll just have to play into that.” You smirk up at him and watch him as the blush spreads to the front of his face as he walks back into the bathroom to finish preparing your bath.

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middlingmay · 1 month

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Marge is Gale's Beard AU

I don't know what happened, but this was supposed to be a funny cute little scene of Bucky stumbling across Marge getting a little frisky with another guy, not knowing she's not actually Gale's girlfriend, and promptly losing his shit. Like 1K words, max

BUT OVER 6000 WORDS LATER AND HERE WE ARE.

I need to be stopped, jesus fucking christ.

Anyway, enjoy!

Warnings: violence, blood. Also period-typical attitudes towards monogamy.

Also, John doesn't look to good for part of this fic, but he is genuinely apologetic, and comes out the other side the John we all know and love. He's just going through some things!

Read under the cut!

Ostensibly, this little get together was a send off for Bucky who was being shipped off to Thorpe Abbotts in England thanks to his new and entirely unwanted position as Air Executive. But it was also a chance for the rest of the fellas to enjoy one more night of fun and frivolity with their loved ones before they left the States in a few weeks, some of them for the very first time. Maybe some of them for the last.

And for Buck, that meant none other than Marge.

They had been friends since they were kids. She was the first and remained the only girl he had ever brought home to his mother, and even father was on his best behaviour whenever she was around. Such was the power of Marjorie Spencer.

She was also the first and only girl he had ever kissed. They were teenagers, and even if Gale wasn’t as half-wild as his classmates about all the pretty girls, he was still a hormonal boy and one night, when he walked her home, he took her little face in his big hands and kissed her.

She’d pulled back frowning. “Gale. I don’t have brothers, but if I did I reckon that’s what it’d feel like to kiss ‘em.”

She wasn’t wrong. He’d heard the nasty locker room talk about boys sporting half a woody just at kissin’ a girl, and Gale hadn’t felt so much as a flicker.

Then, some while later, he’d felt the full fury of those teenage hormones when James ‘Jett’ Granger, school football star, had bowled him over and landed on top of him on the floor with a thud.

Jett had laughed and apologised and hauled Gale, who was not dainty by any stretch of the imagination, up like he was nothing with an apology on his lips. Like he hadn’t just upended Gale’s entire world.

When he told Marge, she’d cackled and leered like a locker room boy and said, “Did you…” and stuck her tongue between her teeth.

Gale spluttered and coughed on his spit and his blood pounded in his ears. But he couldn’t deny it, even as he scolded, “Marjorie Spencer!”

But once she got over her glee and teasing, she saw Gale work his lip like a well done steak and softened. “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with you.”

Gale scoffed. “We both know you’re the only one round here who thinks like that.”

Even Marge couldn’t stubborn her way out of that cold hard fact.

“Alright then,” she said with a set to her jaw. “Then you’ll be my fella, far as anyone knows. Least until you find one of your own.”

Gale’s heart flooded his body with warmth and he must have looked at Marge like she was a saint. “I can’t do that, Marge. What if you find a guy you really want to be your fella?”

But Marge looked highly sceptical. “Round here? You’re all I got.”

He smiled at the sentiment but he still wore worry on his brow and Marge darted forward to kiss at least a bit of it away. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

And they never had. Right up until Gale enlisted and was due to be shipped off to basic training, Marge kept assuring him every boy that came around was a knucklehead, and as little as Gale even let himself do so much as look, he couldn’t say he disagreed with her.

The night before he left, after an awkward near silent dinner with his folks that his mother had insisted on, he and Marge had laid a blanket out on an empty field and looked at the starts.

“I still can’t believe you’re going,” she said, voice thick.

Gale couldn’t say ‘sorry’, couldn’t say he wished he wasn’t going, because he wasn’t no liar. He’d wanted to be a pilot since he was a boy and he couldn’t wait to get started.

“I’m going to miss you like crazy.” But that there, that was the truth.

Marge snorted, true and ugly. “Yeah, right. You’re going to be surrounded by all the cute boys and I’m stuck here with the cream of the Caspar crop.”

Gale kicked her shoe. “Oh, yeah. No lookin’. No touchin’. Not unless I wanna come home with a crack in my skull and a blue ticket in my first. At the least.”

Because Gale wasn’t scared of the military. He wasn’t scared of leaving home or being surrounded by strangers. He wasn’t scared at the possibility of having to head into a fight. But being found out? That petrified him.

Marge clutched his hand with all the strength she possessed. “I’ll write you,” she vowed. “Every day if I have to. I’ll spritz the letters with perfume and kiss them and everything. No one will know, I promise.”

Marge’s promises were better than the word of God.

Until he met John Egan.

The long-limbed, freckled, moustached, larger and louder than life man had thrown himself into Gale’s life with very little input from the man himself. He given him his name and kept by his side, like he’d adopted a dog.

Despite himself, Gale had actively tried to dislike John, or Bucky, at first. He put up a cold front to his overt friendliness; threw off his wandering hands possessed with so much affection that he just couldn’t keep them still. Gale refused every single invitation for as long as he could. And yet.

Gale found himself looking for Bucky in whenever he entered a room. He listened carefully whenever he spoke during briefings, and chiming in until they were bouncing ideas of off each other, unaware of the secret smiles of their superior officers. When Gale struggled to sleep, he found himself asking Bucky any question he could think of just to hear him rattle on until he was finally lulled to rest.

He stopped rejecting and started anticipating John’s touch, even positioning himself so as to welcome it, necessitate it; an arm over the back of a chair set close to his; a tiny gap in a doorway or corridor that required a gentle touch to a guy’s waist or his back. And soon Bucky became one of the only men Gale ever touched comfortably beyond a squeeze of the shoulder or a pat on the arm.

One of the other boys had tried once, to swing an arm over Gale’s shoulder. Whether it was because he saw Bucky do it and wanted to emulate the two men so respected by the others, he wasn’t sure, but he hadn’t done it again. The less said about it, the better.

Marge noticed, of course.

He hadn’t been aware of how much Bucky had filtered into his letters, and Marge’s questions had seemed innocent at first. And Gale had been all to happy for the outlet. Then in one letter she had scribbled:

He sounds like a scream, Gale. I’m glad you’ve made such a fast friend. I can't wait to meet him, and make sure he’s good enough for my fella. Can’t have you taking up with a no good kinda man who’s just going to lead you into trouble.

He knew Marge better than he knew himself. He could read between the lines: make sure he’s no bigot before you go getting attached.

Which brought them to that night at the bar. The first thing John had done on being introduced to Marge was to sweep her off for a dance.

Springing away with Gale’s girl in tow, Bucky hollered over his shoulder, “I gotta make sure poor Marge gets to dance with someone, tonight, Buck!”

The boys had all jeered and Marge swatted John’s chest playfully, but soon she was just as swept up in the force of him as they all were, and laughed with flushed cheeks the whole time.

It warmed something healing in his heart to see the two people closest to him in the world get on like a house on fire.

At one point, when Bucky went to the bar, Marge slumped into his side.

“Oh, Gale. You never stood a chance against him, did you?”

Not a snowflake’s in hell.

But before Gale could get too despondent about that, she continued. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s a good man. I think he- I think you’re safe with him. Yeah?”

Gale nodded. Of course he was. It was Bucky.

Then she got that impish look on her face. “So I say, look your fill.”

Gale shushed her and looked around to see if anyone was paying closer attention than they should’ve. No one was, thankfully, and when his heart rate returned to normal, he remembered he could tease right back.

“Well," he said coyly into her ear, “speaking of looking your fill, that black-haired fella at the corner table at the back has been throwing you looks all night.”

Marge pretended to look unaffected and Gale leaned in even closer. “Don’t think I didn’t see you lookin’ back.”

Marge’s vicious little elbow checked his ribs just as Bucky came back with their drinks.

“Thank you, John,” she said primly. “But I have to visit the powder room.”

John toasted her off and looked at Buck, bemused. “Something I said?”

Gale nearly laughed. “Naw. She just likes to keep me in line.”

John shook his head. “And ain’t that a crying shame. I’m surprised she hasn’t upbraided me for trying to undo all her hard work.”

Later, Gale would blame the giddiness that came from John’s proximity for what he said next. “I only gotta behave with her. You can get me as riled up as you like.”

John inhaled too much of his drink and coughed until there were tears in his eyes. Gale flushed to his ears and kicked him under the table.

Giggling and breathless, John kicked him right back even harder. “Noted.”

“Ask Major Cleven! He’s great at calculations.”

“Sir? Sir!”

A few boys in the ground crew called Buck over, and John waved him off good naturedly. “Go awe the masses, Buck. I need a smoke anyway.”

It look less than five minutes for Marge to come barrelling towards him, a wild and furious and worried look him her eye.

“Gale, It’s John! You gotta get John!”

There was a door at the back of the bar that led to the dead end of an alley outside. When he just wanted a quiet smoke in the peace of the evening, John liked to head out there instead of the front with everyone else, where he could easily while away the better part of an hour talking to all and sundry.

And he was enjoying spending his evening Buck. And Marge.

She was a sweet little spitfire. She had the looks of spun glass and high class, but even after spending nothing more than a handful of hours with her, Bucky could tell she was no wall flower, no meek dame. And John didn’t think about it too closely, but he liked that the girl who Gale loved so much wasn’t so different from himself.

Where John liked the think of him and Buck as sides of the same coin - dark and light; steady and gregarious; push and pull - Marge and Buck were one of a kind, like the couples on the movie posters. Their love felt inevitable.

And, as John was learning about himself, he was apparently a possessive man, because between him and the cigarette in his mouth, he could acknowledge the bitter flash of jealousy he got when he looked at them too long.

He pushed open the back door, a box of matches in hand, and looked up on hearing two frightened gasps.

Marge. Her eyes were so wide, there was more white than blue. Her hair was a mess, clutched in the meaty hand of another man. A man who’s face was too close to the crook of her neck.

And both of them wore such fear in their eyes.

John’s cigarette finally gave up its precarious balance on John’s gaping lips and tumbled to the floor. The box of matches dove after it.

“John.” It was a tiny, panicked sound.

And it snapped John back to attention. With two strides of his long legs he had Marge tucked behind him and slammed the man into the brick wall of the alley hard, and smiled ugly with all teeth when he heard the meaty thunk of his head hit the wall.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” John snarled in the man’s face, low and incandescent with rage he didn’t even know how to begin to unleash.

“John-” Marge tugged at his back, urgent.

“Taking advantage of a girl after a few drinks-”

“No, John-!”

He grabbed two fistfuls of the guy’s shirt and rattled him until he heard teeth clack. “A girl who’s taken. By your superior officer!”

“It’s not like that!” Marge yanked at John’s ear and he was forced to turn away from the man, but he didn’t relinquish him.

He calmed himself as much as he could. “Marge. Are you alright?”

But Marge looked painfully, worryingly exacerbated. “For God’s sake, John! It’s not what it looks like!”

“It looked like he was forcing himself on ya!”

But the Marge clutching at his lapels didn’t look scared, not of the man behind him, anyway. She had a little bit of fear when she looked at him though, and John didn’t like that at all.

It’s not what it looks like.

And if it looked like she was forced…

John’s heart broke for Gale, before the red pricks of anger started to twitch at his muscles.

“Oh. It’s like that, huh?”

“No!”

“Are you with Gale or aren’t you?!”

Marge swallowed something down and almost reluctantly said, “Yes.”

The boy chose the wrong moment to pluck at the reserves of his bravado.

“There’s no harm, Major,” he panted. “It was just some harmless fun. It didn’t mean nothing. We all know Cleven’s too much of a gentleman-”

John snapped his fist into the man’s jaw and followed through. The wall was the only thing that kept him standing. So John pulled him upright and slammed a punch into the side of his face and he went tumbling down.

John followed him, straddling him as he grabbed a handful of the guy’s jacket. Blood was already smeared over his mouth and John rained down hell and hit his nose with a crack and blood came pouring outta that too.

He switched his grip to the guy’s hair to keep the lolling head upright as he leaned down and growled into his ear. “You think you’re going to make a fool out of either one of them, you got another thing coming.”

He pulled back to land one last hit, a good one to drive his point home, when a solid weight barrelled into him from behind, wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled him into the air. John spun around swinging, but another arm got a stranglehold around the back of his neck and he was wrapped up painfully tight and too close to do anything.

And the scent of Buck’s cologne penetrated his senses and the fight left him.

Because fuck. How was he going to explain this? How was he going to tell Buck he’d caught his woman in the arms of another man? Should he even tell him? If it was Bucky, he’d wanna know, but maybe if he spoke to Marge and she promised it was a drunken mistake (God knows he’d had plenty of those), and it would never happen again, he wouldn’t have to tank Buck’s perfect love story.

“John!” Buck shook him hard enough that Bucky knew he tried to get his attention more than once. “The heck were you thinking?! You outta your goddamn mind?!”

Bucky heard shuffling behind him and he managed to turn just enough in Buck’s unforgiving grip to see the man being led inside by some of their boys, who shot furtive, concerned glances at their Majors.

Then there was Marge, hanging back and looking at Buck with something awfully sorry. He felt Buck nod at her and she went to head back inside, but not before sending Bucky a scathing look and a roll of her eyes.

Now there was nothing to spare him from Buck.

Only now did Buck loosen his grip and let Bucky back a step, and only a step.

“You have done some damn foolish things since I met you, Bucky. But fightin’ with a subordinate?!”

“You don’t understand-” and Buck really wasn’t sure he wanted him to.

“I understand plenty. Marge told me everything.”

Buck couldn’t help but scoff. “Oh? And what did Marge say?”

“That you caught her neckin’ with some guy and went off the damn rails!”

Buck was shocked stupid. Not just that Marge had told the truth, but that Buck seemed more pissed at him that he was at her.

“Then why are you riding me for?! I was defending you - you should be thanking me!”

Buck tensed his jaw so hard, Bucky expected to hear a crack. “Thanking you? For nearly bringing down my whole house of cards?!”

By now Bucky felt he was missing some vital information, and he couldn’t think straight with Buck so close to him, radiating fury. He shrugged off Buck’s hands and shook his head.

“Hold on, hold on,” he held up his palms. “You’re pissed at me for socking the guy making it with your girl behind your back?”

Buck sighed harsh and annoyed like Bucky was the most exasperating thing in the world and Bucky was getting more offended by the second.

“No, y’dummy!”

“Dummy?”

“I’m mad because if Marge hadn’t kept her head and got me before anyone else saw you fighting, everyone might have found out she ain’t actually my girl!”

“I - what?!”

Buck gave a frustrated groan that didn’t quite get out of his throat and prayed for patience. And maybe a little bravery. He trusted John, vexing as he could me. But sometimes fear was instinctual. But he couldn’t let Bucky go on thinking he saw what he thought he saw. But Christ if the other man didn’t make it difficult.

“But - you and Marge - since high school. You said-”

“Well, I lied. Kind of.”

“Kind of? You kind of lied?”

Bucky huffed. “We’ve been tellin’ people we’ve been together since high school. So no one would know…about me…” he trailed off meaningfully.

For all but Bucky, apparently. “Know what?”

“That I…that…” God, why couldn’t he just say it? Bucky may be as straight as they come, but he wasn’t that kind of guy, and he was Buck's best friend to boot. He choked down his frustrations and finally managed to spit out, “That…Marge ain’t the only one who likes looking at cute boys.”

Buck blushed as he said it. He sounded like a stupid teenager. But Bucky just stuttered to a stop and gawped at him. Buck watched his mouth flap, trying and failing to utter a sound, like it too couldn’t believe John Egan had finally been rendered silent.

“I - you’re-?”

“Gay? Queer? A big ol’ blue ticket? Yeah.”

What he certainly hadn’t been expecting was for Bucky to near drop to his knees in a mix of relief and panic.

“Haah-fuck, Gale," John grimaced, breathing heavy over his knees, which looked to be the only thing supporting his weight. "They're gonna court martial me in the morning. Don’t get me wrong - I’m glad I didn’t have to break your heart, tellin’ you Marge was stepping out on you, but fuck. I punched out a subordinate. Fuck.”

Side-stepping the unintentional lie in what John said, Buck, mightily and heroically refrained from rolling his eyes. “Don't get hysterical, Bucky. It don't become you. Relax, I'll fix it.”

And really, the sheer force of the scepticism on Bucky's face was down right insulting.

“Yeah? And how you gonna do that?”

Buck's brain worked furiously for an excuse - the reason’s why men hit other men over women that weren’t jealousy. Protection being the main one, but he didn’t want to put Marge in the frame at all if possible. Then he remembered a story Bucky told him once about a boy that had taken a shine to Bucky’s much younger sister, and Bucky had followed him home one day after his sister had come home cryin' with red bruises round her wrists.

“You ain't gonna like it.”

“Solid start.”

Buck nearly cuffed him round the ear like an insolent, child. “Hush. Now, you uh, ever planning on introducing your sisters to the boys?”

Bucky balked. “Absolutely not. What does that-”

“Listen. That man inside, bleeding - he looked a lot like a fella who left your sister a little worse for wear. Let the boys take that however they see fit.”

“The hell you tryna say about my sister?!”

“Nothing, idjit! Listen!”

Bucky shut his trap with visible effort.

“He looked almost exactly like that man, and when you saw him near Marge - near her and nothing else, you understand? You lost it. Alright? You’d had too much to drink, you weren’t thinking clear, and you were seeing you baby sister, not Marge. Right?”

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose and the gesture was so typically Gale’s that it stole his breath to see it on the other man.

But he had to press on. “Right?”

Bucky capitulated. “Alright, alright. But Jeannie ever finds out about this, we’re both dead.”

Buck eyed Bucky then, waiting for the other show to fall. “Is that all you gotta say to me?”

Bucky's face fell and cleared in realisation and Buck's stomach bubbled with a flare of anxiety about what he might say.

“Ah, fuck. Sorry, yeah. I’ve got to apologise to Marge, don’t I?”

Buck’s eye twitched, because Bucky had to be playing so damn dumb on purpose.

But, he wasn’t wrong.

“Well, yeah. She liked that boy. And you gon’ scared him off.”

Bucky scoffed though, waving a dismissive hand. “If you’re her fake fella, Buck. Marge has got to raise her standards for her real one. Don’t worry, I’ll find her a nice guy; a real prince to your pauper, so to speak.”

“That is not how the story goes.”

But then something occurred to Buck. He’d seen Bucky charm plenty of women, a lot of them blondes. Now that Bucky knew Marge was technically single…

“You mean someone like you?”

Bucky smirked and stepped toe to toe with Buck. He let his large hands smooth out the wrinkles Buck had worked into his own uniform wrangling Bucky earlier. His fingers slipped to his crooked tie and slowly knotted it back into place.

“You callin’ me a prince, Buck Cleven?”

Buck wanted to brush it off, to turn it into a joke, say anything to break the tension. But his tongue felt thick and useless in his mouth. All his brain could process was the proximity of Bucky, the smell of Bucky, and heat of his fingers at Buck’s collar.

Bucky leaned closer, like a he had a secret to share. “That make you my princess?”

And that should not have crackled a hot, thrilling tremor to life that sent him rocking infinitesimally closer to Bucky, a gasp somehow escaping the clutch his teeth had on his lips.

Bucky’s eyes darkened, but before he could say or do anything, the backdoor to the pub opened again and Marge’s golden head popped out.

“If you two are quite done?” she sounded like a teacher scolding the class clowns. “I am fending off almost an entire bomb group in there by myself and they’re like a pack of wild dogs. Some help, if you’d be so kind.”

Buck coughed and stepped back and trotted dutifully to Marge’s side. “Sorry, darlin’,” he said and dropped a kiss to her cheek.

Bucky was left with Marjorie Spencer staring at him, hands on her hips.

“Well?” she said expectantly.

Sheepishly, Bucky rubbed the back of his neck. “In my defence, you could do better?”

He saw murder in her eyes and quickly backtracked. Now was not the time for jokes. Evidently Marge did not appreciate them the way Buck did.

Bucky dropped his arms by his sides and looked her in the eye. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted like that, no matter what I thought. I’m not - God, Marge, I’m not a violent man. Bit of a motor mouth sure, and I’ll stand up for any of my boys, but I don’t usually…”

Marge let him stew in the silence for a bit. But eventually, “No you shouldn’t have. I might be thankful that Gale has you looking out for him, but you can’t be such a hot head, John Egan. I don’t appreciate it and Gale don’t like it.”

Gently, Bucky took one of Marge’s hands, tiny in one of his, and raised it to his lips to place a sorry kiss there with a rueful smile “I will never lay hands on someone like that again, unless it's for a very good reason. I promise. But Buck’s pretty good at keeping me in check.”

Marge blessed him with a knowing smile. “I’m sure he is.”

And then Bucky was back in full force. “But seriously, Marge, you’ve got to at least date sideways. You can’t date down. Anyone less than Buck ain’t good enough for you.”

She rolled her eyes and pointed him back inside, letting him offer his arm. “Well when you find him, you let me know. Because I’m shit outta luck.”

They re-entered the pub laughing and any remaining tension in the room seemed to release. As Bucky took Marge for another spin round the dancefloor, he felt Buck’s eyes on them and risked a glance. And what a risk. Gale stared, blue eyes pinned on him over the smooth rim of his glass, tracking Bucky’s every move and licking the moisture off his lips.

Bucky threw him a wink and mouthed, Later, princess.

Colonel Huglin did not appreciate having to consider disciplinary action at six am. Yet having a man like Major John Egan under his command meant Huglin’s dreams didn’t count for much.

He watched this respected, no, revered man stand before him, clasp and unclasp his hands, purse his lips, and shift his legs like he was fighting the urge to rock on his heels. Like a misbehaving school boy. If Huglin had never met him, and someone had asked him to pick out the best pilot (on par with Major Cleven), the quickest thinker, an excellent strategist and the man almost single-handedly responsible for morale on base, Huglin wouldn't even have spared John a glance.

And yet.

“I haven’t seen him yet, but I’d bet my commission that the young fella you thrashed good and sound yesterday looks real pretty this morning.”

John grimaced. And, surprisingly enough it was not the wince of one awaiting an unwanted scolding, but one that actually looked like regret. John, who never ever failed to look a man in the eye, looked down at his shoes, lips twisting, and just nodded.

Major Cleven had come to him even earlier, at 5.20am, before Huglin had even had his coffee, and filled him in on what happened last night.

“You know Major Egan, Sir. I know you don’t always see eye to eye but he’s not a violent man, not like that. But,” and Gale and leaned forward in his chair, concern creasing his brow and wringing his hands together, “his sister, before he left, she had some…awful kind of trouble. With a fella. That looked just like the man from last night, John said. You know how much he looks after the men, and he loves his sisters. It drives him crazy he’s not there to look after ‘em with their dad not being around anymore… Sorry Sir, I’m rambling.” He was, and it was unlike Cleven who was a man of few words. Surely, a testament to his worry over his friend and brother-in-arms. “I just mean to say, John thought - John saw -"

And Huglin had cut Cleven off with a wave of his hand. He understood. He’d seen countless men wide eyed, crying or screaming at something or someone who wasn’t really there. It didn’t mean Egan could get entirely off the hook, but he understood.

“You have anything to say for yourself?”

“Can I see him?”

Huglin hadn't been expecting that. “What?”

“The…guy. God I don’t even know his name. But I’d like to apologise, if he’ll let me. He deserves that at least, and I’d like to settle it before I go.”

He wasn’t due to fly to Thorpe Abbots until mid-morning. There was plenty of time. “Evans. Airman First Class Evans. And I’ll ask his superior officer and let you know.”

Bucky released a breath and nodded, more to himself, Huglin thought, before he squared his shoulders at the Colonel.

“I just want to apologise, Sir. What I did yesterday was not becoming of a Major of the US Airforce. I know that. It’s not the kind of man I am or how I want my men to see me. I’m…” John swallowed. “I embarrassed the uniform. And I hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry, Sir.”

Huglin needed a moment to collect himself. He wasn’t stupid. He knew part of the reason the men admired Egan so was because he never backed down from the higher ups, always spoke his mind and said his piece - but Huglin couldn’t think of one time it wasn’t on their behalf. To get them what they needed or give them the best odds, or even distract them on days the base just became too heavy. But this was a side of John that Huglin had never seen: the human man underneath the military man.

And Huglin had sisters, too. He could empathise.

“I’m glad to hear that, Major. Normally, there’d be a disciplinary hearing, and we’d decide what was to be done with you.”

John bit his cheek but nodded, accepting.

“But, I think in this case, I can smooth things over. If, you apologise to Evans and his CO, and goddamn cool it on the liquor, John. I mean it. There might even be a mandatory anger management session with the doc in your future, and if so I won't hear a damn single word of complaint from you, understood?”

John reared back looking stunned, and Huglin let himself enjoy it. “Don’t look so surprised. Your buddy Cleven was by here and told me everything. And be glad he did. Otherwise I’d be tempted to ground you the rest of this damn war.”

John said nothing.

“Alright, get out of here. You’ve got a trip to prepare for. And an apology, too.”

“Yes, sir,. John turned smartly on his heels and headed for the door.

When he reached the jam, Huglin called out,. "And John? Give my best wishes to your sister, will you? If they need anything, you let me know.”

John made a funny noise in his throat and nodded before he all but fled the room.

Buck was waiting for him outside. He leapt to his feet when he saw Bucky emerge looking frazzled.

“Well? How’d it go?”

Bucky fell into step next to him, and out of the corner of his mouth said, “What on earth did you tell Huglin? Because whatever it was, I almost got out of there scot-free.”

And Buck didn't fail to notice that Bucky didn’t sound happy about it. He new in the sober light of day, and with the clarity sleep brings, John would be beating himself up something fierce for attacking that boy. Which he should, by rights, but John did take self-flagellation to extremes sometimes. Gale wondered if it was the Catholic in him, lapsed or not.

“You’re still Air Exec?”

“Yeah?”

Buck nudged him. “Sounds like a punishment to me.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and came to a halt at the mouth of the building, staring out onto the tarmac.

“I want to apologise to the boys,” he said, hands on his hips and head hanging low. “I just, can’t stop thinking about them seeing me like that. I don’t…”

Standing where they were, Buck couldn't do much but clasp his shoulder and lean down to look Bucky in the eye. “Then let’s go find ‘em.”

The boys, as it turned out, were just finishing getting dressed. They didn’t notice the Majors enter the bunk house at first.

“-wonder what happened?”

“None of your business, that’s what happened,” said DeMarco.

“It shouldn’t have happened.” Brady. Bucky flinched.

“Ay,” Curtis dove into the conversation. “You don’t know shit. If he got a bit banged up, then he deserved it. Don’t go thinking anything else.”

And despite himself, Bucky let himself crack a smile at Curt’s friendship and loyalty.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Brady insisted, stubborn and louder. “John’s our leader. He’s a Major. I’m his co-pilot for crying out loud. He should be setting an example, and starting bar fights isn’t it. I don’t know about you, but I want to head into war with the John Egan who has your back, and keeps his head in the air so good he solves problems before half the crew even notice they’re there. Not the John who’ll flip at a switch. I don’t like that John.”

Several of the boys protested and booed Brady and started yelling and cursing, and they knew a more serious argument was about the break out with Brady bearing the brunt of it if they didn’t step in.

Buck let Bucky go when he stepped further into the room.

“Brady’s right,” he called, and the men snapped to attention and Brady dropped the shoe he’d been polishing and stumbled to his feet.

Buck walked up steady behind Bucky, a solid presence at his shoulder. “At ease, gentlemen.”

Bucky stood tall and true. “Last night, I acted in a way that was unfit for a man of the US Airforce, rank be damned. It should never have happened, and it will never happen again. I just wanted you to know that.” He surveyed the boys and they looked on silent. “We all make mistakes, and things get heated sometimes. This one is my mistake, and I’ll own that. So don’t you boys go thinking that starting fights with your fellow airmen to blow of some steam is acceptable. It’s not. You can all learn that lesson from me. That’s part of my job - teaching you how to avoid making the same mistakes I have.”

And in true Bucky fashion he flipped the solemn mood of the room with a switch and a turn of his lips and he gave them a sincere Bucky grin.

“Like that time I wandered into the Colonel’s quarters by mistake and got stuck on latrine duty for a week.” The boys relaxed into their laughter. “Remember that?” He pointed at Curt. “You made me sleep out in that abandoned storage hut until I was done.”

“You stank!”

“Or that time I yanked Ham back from the shaky step heading into the mess hall?”

Ham howled from his bunk. “Because you’d tripped a week or so before it, and sent your scrambled eggs all down a Red Cross dame. That handprint on your cheek didn’t disappear for a whole day!”

Buck just stood back and marvelled at Bucky's ability to work a room.

“So if me or Buck here ain’t around to give you the benefit of our experience,” he reached out and clasped the back of Brady’s head and scrubbed it playfully, “be damn sure you listen to Brady. Best co-pilot there is.”

The men all hollered and scrambled to rib at Brady, rubbing his head like Bucky did or punching him playfully in the arm or chucking his chin.

But Bucky wasn’t finished. “Because we’re the 100th. The best damn bomb squad there is. And we’ll damn well act like it. Do you hear me?”

“Yes sir!”

Bucky shouted louder. “I said do you hear me?!”

“SIR, YES SIR!”

“Because who are we?!”

“The 100th!”

“Who are we?!!”

“THE 100TH!”

“Then get your gear on, get out there, and show ‘em how it’s done!”

Making a thunderous racket, the boys gathered the last of their things and rushed out the door, Brady the last of the group, shooting Bucky a small, pleased, and proud smile before he disappeared.

The silence they left behind was a stark contrast. Until Buck couldn’t take it anymore.

He snorted and cackled and John threw his hands in the air. “Really, Buck?”

Buck cleared his throat and got himself under control. Adopting the highest voice he could, in something that could barely pass as Bucky's odd not-quite Wisconsin accent, he teased him, “My name’s John Egan, and I’m a terrible leader on the ground!”

Bucky shoved him hard, but yanked him back with a firm arm around his bicep and pulled him in close, so the buckles of their belts gave a soft clack in greeting.

They were alone.

“I’ll be flying at at 10.30 sharp,” Bucky mumbled up close.

Buck nodded. “I know. I’ll see you off, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

“Mm, with a handshake in front of the boys.”

Buck gave him a firm look. “Of course. Don’t you go thinking otherwise.”

Bucky smiled and leaned in closer, and Buck was surprised that he even could. “But the boys aren’t here, now.”

“Oh, that’s what you’re lookin’ for, huh? A little send of?”

Bucky's hands bravely slipped down to his waist and squeezed, and Buck resolutely did not think about how his waist fit all nice in John’s stupidly large hands. He was not a small man - he was tall; he worked hard all his life, and despite a less than stellar childhood, always had enough to eat. But John was just so damn big.

“Just a kiss, Buck. For luck. To tide me over till you get over the pond.”

Buck grinned, a rare one showing his teeth and leaned in until he felt the softness of Bucky's lips skim the edges of his own. He kept it there, just not quite touching until he heard Bucky's breath hitch and his hands tried their hardest not to wander some more.

And against that mouth he’d dreamed about in his sleep, he’d fantasised about in his waking hours, he murmured, playful and sweet, “No.”

He turned sharp in his heels and escaped Bucky's grasp and threw a pleased grin over his shoulder at Bucky gaping in his wake.

“Buck!”

“You’ll just have to wait for me, Johnny!” And Gale ducked out of the bunk house and left Bucky behind, to attend his duties.

And John stood there wondering what on earth he was in for, taking up with a tease like Buck Cleven. But he couldn’t wait to find out.

#clegan #buck x bucky #john egan #gale cleven #mota #masters of the air #fic

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rambleonwaywardson · 18 days

Text

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 3

Masterpost

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is back-up commander and CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: Uh oh, the chapters are getting longer. Hope y'all will stick with me because I have plans for these boys. Heads up, this chapter does contain some expressions of homophobia. Also there's no new terms that I think need defining here, but I'm thinking of creating a term definition post for those I've already used.

‘John Egan and Alex Jefferson to make history as first queer and black representation on the moon’

‘Artemis III crew ready for liftoff in one month’

‘So three bachelors and a homosexual walk into a bar, er, a rocket…’

‘NASA targeting November 6 launch’

‘NASA’s diversity campaign’

‘What having a gay man in the space program means for the future of America’

‘NASA press conference gets heated after probing sexuality questions’

‘Biddick goes after reporter to defend fellow astronaut’

–

September 30, 2025

Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

As NASA’s Artemis Public Affairs Officer, it is Marjorie Spencer’s job to relay information about the Artemis program to the public as well as to coordinate press events between the media and the crew and/or mission control. As Public Affairs Officer, it’s her job to wrangle a bunch of rowdy astronauts and convince them to play nice with the press, even when the press doesn’t play nice with them. With this particular crew, it can, often, be like wrangling a bunch of rambunctious, highly opinionated, and incredibly stubborn teenage boys. Or a bunch of selectively trained dogs whose selective training just happens to be whatever they feel like remembering in the moment.

A lot of people don’t truly appreciate how, as Public Affairs Officer, it is Marge’s job to make these boys – ahem, grown men – look presentable to the public when behind the scenes they are the bane of her existence. In the most loving way possible.

Public Affairs Officer, however, is only one of her jobs.

As Best Friend, her job often includes the emotional damage control that flies high above a PAO’s paygrade.

As she finishes up welcoming a room full of reporters to Johnson Space Center, she reminds them that this will be the last press conference that the astronauts will take part in before starting their pre-launch quarantine process in just a few weeks. They will have another pre-launch press conference while in quarantine a couple of days before they board the Orion crew capsule, before they strap themselves to the top of NASA’s most powerful rocket ever created.

“Please welcome NASA’s Artemis 3 crew,” Marge says smoothly. “Major John Egan, mission commander. First Lieutenant Curtis Biddick, lunar module pilot. Dr. Robert Rosenthal, crew physician. Alexander Jefferson, mission specialist.”

One by one, the crew members, dressed in their NASA flight suits, walk up onto the small stage at the front and take their seats behind the table, which is emblazoned with the NASA logo. They each have a gold astronaut pin on their flight suit collars, signifying the fact that they have already successfully flown in space. These four men are some of the most qualified people currently in the space program, and they were hand-selected two years ago to fly this mission. Together, they have logged nearly 1,000 hours of training for Artemis 3, including crew module sims, lunar module sims, zero-gravity EVAs in the neutral buoyancy tank, and lunar terrain sims. In five weeks, that training will be put to use for the chance to put the next human footprints on the moon.

At first, the questions are typical, what the crew is prepared for. They’ve been answering similar questions through much of the training process. How does it feel to be going to the moon? What will each of their roles be on the mission? What kind of training have they been doing? Do they feel prepared? What does it mean for each of them to be on this mission? What do they think it means for the general public and for the future of science? For the space program? For Bucky and Curt, how does it feel to be the first men since the 70s to step foot on lunar soil?

The crew answers them all genuinely and professionally. They joke with the reporters, a trait that has made them endearing to much of the public. They wax poetic about flying to the moon and how they’ve all dreamed about it, how they’re honored to be a part of something so grand, what they hope it will symbolize for people all over the world. They say exactly what the reporters, and the public, generally want to hear.

Until they can’t. Because at some point, no matter what you say, to someone somewhere it will never be right.

To be honest, Bucky often stops listening to the reporters names and affiliations during these things. So he isn’t sure who asks this question, but he perks up when the man says “This question is for John Egan.” Bucky nods and the man goes on. “This crew has become well-known for being a crew of young bachelors, except for you. You’re getting married in just a couple weeks, correct? To Major Gale Cleven, also a NASA astronaut.”

Bucky nods again. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Do you or Major Cleven have any concerns about you going to the moon just days after the big day?”

Bucky smirks. “Well, which big day are you referring to? The wedding or the launch?”

The reporters in the room chuckle quietly. “The wedding,” the man says.

Bucky tries not to roll his eyes. You get married and suddenly it doesn’t matter that both spouses have been professional and highly trained adrenaline junkies for years before this. “Of course, there’s always concerns when it comes to hurling yourself off of a planet,” he replies. “But Gale and I have been through this together, more than once. We know the risks, and we support each other 100%. The only thing that will be different is I’ll have a wedding ring with me.”

As reporters clamor to get the next question, Marge points and a woman stands up, introducing herself. “Major Egan,” she starts. Two in a row. Bucky clenches his jaw, worried he knows where this press conference is about to go. “How do you think coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community affected your role within NASA and within the Artemis program?”

Bucky takes a quiet but deep breath. “My sexuality has never been a secret,” he answers. At least, it hasn’t been since high school. And yet the media still aren’t comfortable with words like gay or homosexual or queer or even LGBT. When they do say these words, it’s almost hushed, like it’s something terrible. “It wasn’t a secret when I flew on the ISS two years ago, and it isn’t now. My qualifications and experience, I think, speak for themselves as to why I am on this mission.”

“Do you consider yourself a role model for the queer youth of today?” Someone jumps in.

Bucky hears Curt stifle a laugh beside him, and he almost smiles himself. “I’m not trying to be any sort of role model or anything,” he says honestly. “God knows you could find better than me. But I am an Air Force pilot, I am an astronaut, I am an engineer, and yes, I am also going to marry a man next month. And that man has been the love of my life for over a decade. So if those facts can somehow align to give others the opportunity to dream, to believe in themselves and in a better future, then I’m glad.” He glances over at Marge, who looks a little wary of where things are heading, but she gives him a thumbs up for his answer.

“So this isn’t just a publicity stunt in NASA’s diversity agenda?” another reporter asks. At the same time, someone throws their hand up and says “what kind of message is NASA trying to send by putting you on this mission?”

The questions and excited mumbling of other reporters jumble into some cacophony of muddled sound, and Bucky bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something out of line. Because as a public figure, anything he says now will be ‘out of line.’

Another reporter stands up, unbidden, before he can even think of an appropriate answer to either of the questions he was able to hear. “For the rest of the crew,” he calls out, before Marge can direct him to take his seat. “How do you feel about having a gay man in the spacecraft with you?”

Bucky can taste blood as he bites down harder. Marge steps up on stage in a hurry, saying something about that being enough questions about Major Egan’s personal life, and any further questions should be directly mission related.

But Curt has already moved to stand up, and Rosie and John simultaneously reach out from either side to push him back down. Alex leans forward at the other end of the table, intent on putting that question to rest with a facial expression that is as close to a glare as can be managed without getting called out for being ‘unfriendly’ by the media. “This crew is like family,” he states with an overwhelmingly exaggerated sense of calm. “John is one of the best pilots NASA has. We are all proud to call him our friend and our commander.”

Marge, now standing firmly next to Alex at the end of the table so she can moderate more directly, nods at him in approval. As she moves to select someone for the next question, though, one of the reporters near the front scoffs and not-so-subtly mumbles something under his breath that leaves Bucky dazed, his ears ringing. Next thing he knows, Curt’s chair is clattering backwards as he shoots to his feet – “What did you say? What the fuck did you say!” Rosie is holding him back from jumping the table with all of his grip strength, and the newsroom is erupting in shouts from the reporters. Questions and insults fly across the room, directed at one another and at Bucky, too. He just sits there quietly, his elbows on the table and his chin resting on his folded hands, letting the words slap him in the face and settle like stones in his chest. He forces himself to stop biting down on his cheek, and watches numbly as security barges into the frenzied crowd to begin escorting reporters out of the room.

When Rosie finally releases his grip, Curt grabs his chair and sits back down with an angry grunt, shaking his head. “Stupid fucks,” he mutters. Marge ends the press conference after that.

As the room is cleared, the crew is shuffled out of the newsroom and into Marge’s office down the hall. She sighs and puts her head in her hand, pacing the room, her heels clacking methodically on the tile. The men stand quietly in a line, looking anywhere but at each other. Finally, Marge takes a deep breath and looks them each in the eye. “Well,” she says. “That could have been… well. That was bad. Okay, that was bad.” She looks at Bucky. “You did great, John. Thank you for how you handled that. I’m so sorry. We’ll figure out a way to handle this better for your pre-launch press conference.”

Bucky just nods. “Yeah,” he says distantly. “Yeah, no big deal.”

If we’re lucky the fag will die up there.

“It’s a big fucking deal,” Curt mutters angrily. They’re used to this kind of thing by now; between John, a gay man, and Alex, a black man, the crew has become overwhelmingly and depressingly aware that the world has not yet changed quite enough to escape derision over difference being normal, over people existing outside the boxes that society has designed. They deal with it, they move on, they do their job. But today was more… well, it was just more than usual. Like the closer they get to launch, the more the media is concerned about all the wrong things. And the more comfortable they are with voicing it.

“It’s fine,” Bucky insists. “Nothing that I haven’t heard before, really.” He can hear it in his own voice, though: He isn’t sure how much he believes himself.

If we’re lucky…

Rosie pats him on the shoulder. “Like Alex said, we’re family. We’ve got your back, and we won’t tolerate this shit.” Bucky tries to give a little half smile.

…the fag will die up there.

Marge nods and checks their schedule on her tablet. “Let’s, um, let’s all take a breather, okay? We don’t have any major press engagements until right before launch.” She looks up at them, and she fights a frown when she sees the varying states of anger, frustration, and dejection on their faces. She knows it’s not her fault, but it’s her job to coordinate and moderate these events. She tries to smile reassuringly instead. “I’ll work with each of you on your own interviews and media appearances over the next few weeks, but I need you boys to focus on the mission. I’ll take care of addressing how this conference ended, and I’ll work with public relations to make sure we can avoid things getting out of hand in the future.” She knows she has a strongly worded email from the director of the human spaceflight program – or possibly even an impromptu meeting – coming her way any minute. She has to work out how to tidy up this mess, but it can’t be her priority at the moment.

She hugs Alex, Rosie, and Curt as they exit her office. Then she looks at Bucky, who has barely moved at all. “Hey,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He glances up at her before looking back at his shoes. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

Bucky shrugs, but doesn’t answer for a long, long moment. “I should be,” he finally sighs. “I’m used to it, really. It’s been the same since my astronaut candidacy was announced. Hell, it’s been the same my whole life.” He scoffs. “I don’t know. It just feels… worse somehow, this time.”

He looks up at Marge again, and Marge feels her chest tighten at the tired sadness in his eyes. Even the toughest men she knows have never been bullet proof. She pulls him into her arms and lets him hold on for as long as he needs as he tries to keep himself together.

If we’re lucky…

“You’re one of our best,” she tells him quietly as she rubs his back. “Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.”

“I know,” Bucky says, but his voice chokes on the words. “I…” He holds onto her tighter, and he can’t bring himself to say anything else.

If we’re lucky…

When he lets go, Marge squeezes his arm. Her assistant knocks on the door then, here to tell her that Neil Harding, the director of the human spaceflight program, wants to see her in his office. She thanks the woman and takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she tells Bucky. “I’m going to work on cleaning up this mess. But once I do, I’ll meet you at yours for some good old fashioned damage control.” Damage control meaning drinks, snacks, and general mayhem. Bucky kisses her on the cheek, thanks her, and watches her strut out of the room, off to fulfill her third role: certified badass.

–

Just minutes after Marge leaves Neil Harding’s office, Gale finds himself outside the very same door, wondering why he’s been summoned out of the blue in the middle of his work day. He’s greeted by a woman who he hasn’t seen in years, looking as prim and proper as ever even in her European Space Agency flight suit.

“Sandra?” He asks.

She turns around and smiles politely at him, that charming and yet almost disarming way she always does. “Gale! Wow, it’s been some time hasn’t it?”

Gale nods, but eyes her carefully in confusion. “Sure has. Nice to see you again.”

Sandra looks unphased though, exactly as he would expect her to. This woman could be faced with a dead body or three or ten – and probably has been – and wouldn’t bat an eye. She is, perhaps, the strongest woman Gale knows, and NASA really is full of strong women. “How are you?” she asks. “And how’s John? Or, Bucky I believe is what people call him around here. You Americans and your funny nicknames.”

“Good, good,” Gale says. “He’s going up on Artemis 3 in November.”

Sandra puts a hand on his shoulder and almost looks… sad? “Oh I know. It’s all the buzz, isn’t it?”

Gale arches an eyebrow, not quite sure what she’s getting at. Before he can say anything, though, the door to Neil’s office opens and the man himself is ushering them inside.

“Gale! Sandra! We have a lot to cover so get on in here.”

–

When Marge finally lets herself into Buck and Bucky’s home with a spare key, armed with ice cream and alcohol, she stops short as she walks into the living room. She leans against the doorframe, one hand on her hip and the other holding the groceries. It’s only 4pm and Bucky, who went home early after the whole fiasco with the media, is slouched down low in the middle of the couch, bundled in an old Yankees sweatshirt with Pepper curled up at his side, her head in his lap. The news is on, a clip from their press conference earlier. A reporter is talking in depth about the incident, and the entire “controversy” over NASA’s “agenda.” As he watches, he doom-scrolls on his phone, and Marge knows he’s digging himself into a deep, deep hole filled with social media comments. His eyes are red, but his face is dry.

“John,” Marge says. He looks up at her and smiles weakly. She motions towards the TV, where the reporter is now reading an official statement from NASA, saying that the organization supports Major John Egan and the entirety of the Artemis 3 crew 100%; that the crew was selected based on merit and capability; that each member has been extensively trained and has shown that they are highly qualified and prepared for a lunar mission; and that NASA stands by all of their astronauts and employees, regardless of identity, and will not tolerate attacks of any kind such as those that occurred today.

Bucky watches the report blankly before shifting his eyes over to Marge. She sighs before walking over to the coffee table, where she sets down the bag of groceries and picks up the remote. The TV clicks off. “Enough of that,” she says. When she collapses down next to Bucky and Pepper on the couch, she peeks over at his phone. Social media comments, sure enough. Supportive and detrimental both. She plucks the phone from his hand and turns it off, placing it face down on the coffee table. “And enough of that.”

John just stares at it on the tabletop, idly stroking Pepper’s ears. He won’t look at Marge, so she reaches over across Pepper and places a hand on his shoulder. “John, look at me.”

He does, and he takes a deep, shaky breath. He opens his mouth to speak but closes it again, biting down on the inside of his lip. Pepper licks his hand. He takes another breath and looks Marge right in the eye. “There’s death threats,” he says. When Marge just frowns, he rubs a hand over his face. “For me. And for Gale. Not many, thank God, but they’re there. I read them.”

“Oh honey,” Marge says sadly. She gets up to switch to his other side, so she can wrap her arms around him properly. He lets himself settle into the embrace and closes his eyes, letting his most trusted friend ground him on one side and his dog on the other.

“Thank you for issuing that statement,” he mumbles.

Marge lays her head on top of his. “Harding wants to talk to you tomorrow, and he wanted me to tell you that the human space flight program fully supports you and always has. I think he wanted to give you some space today. Once you’re up for it, we’ll bring the whole crew in to discuss how to handle this in the future.” Bucky gives a small nod of acknowledgement. “You know it’s not really about you, right?” Marge asks. “Those things that people are saying. It’s entirely about them. None of them know you, and no one can, in any meaningful way, deny that you belong on this mission. This is about their own problems and their own prejudices. You,” she squeezes him harder, “have done everything right.”

Bucky is silent for a long time, until finally he says, “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

“Alright,” Marge says easily. She leans away and looks at him, grinning. “Time for some damage control.”

–

By 6:30pm, Gale can’t get the door of their house open fast enough. He hasn’t heard from Bucky all day and needs to tell him about the meeting with Harding. When he gets inside, though, he’s greeted by loud music pumping through their stereo speakers. As he walks into the living room, he takes in the sight of half empty cocktail glasses and beer bottles, open ice cream cartons and abandoned spoons, a bag of chips and a plate of fruit, and the throw pillows strewn all over the floor. He pauses in his tracks, staring at the carnage as his excitement drains rapidly from his body.

Damage Control.

Fuck.

Pepper runs out of the kitchen to greet him, tail wagging so hard her whole body goes with it. Gale tilts his head and smiles at her. Throwing his keys on the coffee table next to Bucky’s abandoned phone, he crouches down and scratches under Pepper’s collar. “What happened, Pep?” He asks her.

She just bumps his hand with her wet nose and spins around once before trotting off back to the kitchen. He follows her tentatively and peeks through the kitchen doorway, where Bucky is sitting on the counter while Marge stands, leaning back against the center island across from him. There’s flour and dirty cooking utensils everywhere, and it smells like tomato sauce.

Marge looks down at Pep and then up at Gale. “Hey there,” she says.

They’ve been laughing and singing and dancing all evening, but when Bucky looks up and sees the hesitant half smile on Gale’s face, the furrow in his brow, he knows Gale has already figured out that something is wrong anyways. The smile falls from Bucky’s face at the same time it falls from Gale’s. “Buck,” he says, but it barely pushes past his throat as a whisper.

“What’s wrong?” Gale asks. He looks from Bucky to Marge and back. “John?”

Bucky shrugs and averts his eyes, watching Pepper instead as she flops down dramatically on the tile floor. “I’m fine,” he says.

“Come on, John,” Gale sighs. But Bucky won’t look at him, so Gale looks at Marge instead.

She brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Some things were said at the press conference today,” she supplies. “We had to end it early, with security pulling some reporters from the room.”

Gale frowns. “What kind of things?”

“Mostly about John’s sexuality. And your relationship. They were pretty innocent at first, but-“

“If we’re lucky the fag will die up there,” Bucky bites out. Gale feels frozen in place. He blinks, shoves his hands in his pockets, takes them out again. “There’s been worse online,” Bucky adds.

“John,” Gale says quietly. He steps forward, one hand outstretched, but he stops short when Bucky crosses his arms protectively over his chest.

“It’s not a big deal,” Bucky says, ducking his head. They both know that’s not true. ‘Damage Control’ isn’t for things that aren’t a big deal. Bucky shrugs. “At least, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Hey, I’m used to it right? I just gotta keep on going.” He laughs bitterly, but when he looks up at Gale, the hurt on the other man’s face squeezes his chest all funny and he looks away again. Then there’s a warm arm around his back, a hand on the back of his head. He feels Gale standing in front of him, and he lets his head fall forward to rest against his. Slowly, he lifts his arms to wrap around his fiancé, and he grips the fabric of his shirt in white-knuckled, shaking hands.

After a couple of long, silent minutes, nothing but their careful breathing passing in the air between them, Bucky takes a deep breath. “Wow, way to put a damper on this little party, huh? Let’s uh, let’s go back to the part where I don’t have to think about this tonight.”

They both know they’ll have to talk about this later, but Gale nods and lets go. Bucky grabs tightly to his hand, though, wanting a tether to stop this feeling of drifting away.

Marge motions for them to go back out to the living room. “Pizza in the oven. I’ll bring it out in a minute.”

When she does eventually follow them into the living room, carrying a tray of pizza, she walks in on them dancing in the middle of the room to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis as it plays over the speakers. Bucky smoothly twirls Gale around before pulling him close again, and Marge is, not for the first time, in awe of the pure adoration that passes between the two of them. “Shouldn’t you save your first dance song for your actual wedding night?” she asks as she sets the pizza on the coffee table next to Bucky’s phone, still upside down, and Gale’s keys.

They slow to a stop and look at her. Bucky shrugs. “Gotta practice so I don’t trip over myself and embarrass my bride.”

Gale blushes and half-heartedly mumbles “stop calling me that.”

Bucky grins. “What? My bride?” He gently pulls Gale down onto the couch with him, wrapping an arm around his waist and kissing him on the temple. “But I love the way it makes you blush.”

Marge gags dramatically and tells them to eat their pizza.

As they’re polishing it off, even giving Pepper her own little piece, Gale licks his fingers and says nonchalantly, “I have some news.”

When he doesn’t go on, Marge rolls her eyes. “Care to share with the class?”

Gale is quiet for a second, but then a grin spreads across his face as he looks at both of them. “I’m going to the moon earlier than we thought. Artemis 4.”

Bucky jumps up so fast he bangs a knee hard on the table and Marge has to lunge forward to keep the pizza tray from falling to the floor. Pepper jumps up in alarm as Bucky spins to face Gale, ignoring the pain shooting through his leg. “You’ve been home for-“ he checks the clock on the wall. “An hour! And you didn’t say anything until NOW?”

Gale shrugs sheepishly. “There were more important things-“

“No!” Bucky cries. “No… Wait. How in hell did you get yourself onto the A4 roster?”

Artemis 4 is planned to launch in just over a year. Crew selection had been made months ago. Gale rubs the back of his neck. “Well, the two ESA astronauts that were supposed to go got bumped cause of health concerns. ESA was able to put in one other astronaut, but NASA wanted a more experienced pilot in the lander. Harding called me in today.”

“Gale, that’s amazing!” Marge says, crawling across the couch to hug him tight. “Oh my god, this is so amazing. Congratulations!” She’s in part already thinking about the press coordination and social media posting that this necessitates, but holy shit that can wait for now.

When she pulls away, Bucky reaches down and wraps his arms around Gale’s middle, pulling him up from the couch and spinning him around. Then he kisses him hard and spins him again, Gale laughing as he yells for Bucky to set him down. “What!” Bucky exclaims. “You gotta get used to being helpless in the air again, you’re going to the moon!”

Gale rolls his eyes as Bucky sets him down. “Who did ESA toss into the thick of it?” Bucky asks.

“Sandra Westgate.” Gale raises an eyebrow as he says this, watching for Bucky’s reaction.

It’s Marge, though, that jumps in as Bucky tries to process that. “No way, Croz’s old flame?”

“Yep.”

Bucky shakes his head, trying not to laugh. Harry Crosby, Houston’s best flight dynamics officer, had spent a hot summer a few years back – before he and his now-wife Jean got back together after a bit of a break – gallivanting about town with Sandra Westgate. She’s top class, one of the best astronauts in the European Space Agency. Gale is lucky to be flying with her, really. But damn. “Does… does Croz know?”

Gale nods, chuckling. “Yeah, he knows. Saw him gaping at her like a fish as I showed her around this afternoon. They’ve both moved on, but…”

“Awkward,” Marge cringes.

“She’ll be sticking around Houston for the next year, starting in a couple weeks,” Gale explains. “To train with us.”

“Plenty of time to un-move on,” Bucky muses.

Marge throws a pillow at him, but he dodges it and watches as it crashes into a fake plant in the corner of the room. “Don’t say that!” Marge reprimands. “Croz and Jean are very happy together you ass.”

Bucky shrugs. “Sorry.” He looks at Gale, who is still standing facing him. “Now don’t you go getting any ideas either. Sandra’s a strong and lovely woman.”

Gale cups the back of Bucky’s neck and kisses him softly. “I would never,” he whispers, before he falls back onto the couch. Bucky collapses next to him, grabbing Gale’s hand again so he can fiddle with his fingers.

They look at each other, and Bucky presses his lips to Gale’s knuckles. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m proud of you, too.”

Marge takes one last bite of pizza. “It’s sickening how in love you two are.”

Gale smiles shyly. “Always have been.”

Bucky smiles back at him, but too many thoughts are swirling around in his head, and he feels the words choke and fizzle on his tongue.

…

Part 4

#clegan astronaut au #clegan #clegan fic #masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #bucky egan #buck cleven #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #buck x bucky #bucky x buck #buck squared

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