#veteran!john

[middlingmay]

Horse Trainer!Gale x Veteran!Bucky AU

Part one of my headcanons for this AU is here!

Some warnings to get us started: slight mention of alcohol abuse, references to gun violence, war, death, PTSD and a car accident.

Something bright and cheery for your Wednesday, eh? I promise it gets cute later down the line, just not today! Today we mean business. So here we go!

Bucky couldn’t remember wanting to be anything other than a pilot when he grew up.

His ma used to draw all kinds of aircraft: jets, airliners, gliders, helicopters, even a seaplane once. John would tuck himself into her side and watch, mouth open and fascinated as she drew smooth confident lines.

She explained to him why the nose was this shape, and how the wings and tail needed to be in balance, why the placement and size of the engines mattered. She went to school for it, before he and his sisters came along. Well, before his dad came along, really.

He didn’t take much of it in, he'd be ashamed to realise later, but he did absorb her obsession with aviation. Just not for the design. He would however, try to encourage her to go back to school to finish her degree.

Mama Egan took him to his first air show when he was eight, and she had to scruff him by the neck to stop him from taking off like a shot towards the real, live WWII B-17.

Instead, he thrashed at the end of her hand, jumping around like an eel as she walked him towards it anyway, and accepted the boost inside once his ma had convinced the pilot to let John take a peek inside.

He never looked back.

He enlists when he’s eighteen, and rockets up the ranks quickly. By the time he becomes Major - and a very young Major - the new recruits look at him like he’s some kind of maverick, some kind of legend.

The higher-ups see the natural born leader he is, and the boys in his squadron know him as brave, quick thinking, and with instincts that couldn’t have possibly all come from training. He could read situations in the air like most of them read books. When John Egan had a feeling, or ordered you to do something out of the blue, you did not ask questions.

Although he joined up out of pure enthusiasm and desperation to be a pilot, he quickly sees his time in the air force as an opportunity to help people. But, almost as quickly, he realises that he and the Brass have different views on how to go about that.

He dislikes combat missions the most. Sometimes it’s pretty black and white, and John can feel pride when he sees enemy targets crumble into dust. Or when he’s lost one of his men and he feels a thrum of vengeance he knows he shouldn’t and tries to suppress but sometimes can’t quite help on the darker nights.

But mostly he learns how devastating combat missions are. He much prefers supply drops and recovery missions, but these are so few and far between, that he gives up that privilege to those in his squadron to help keep up their morale. Their morale was his responsibility, after all.

John takes to drinking, just a little bit. Never enough to affect his work. But on days when he can’t shake the anger or the gloom, the glow of whisky helps him hide it better.

Somewhere along the line, his passion burns out and he starts to want out. He’s still one of their best pilots, still a role model for all the pilots, navigators and serving men and women on base - that is to stay, he still acts the part. He signs up for his second eight-year contract, but two years into it, he can’t stomach the thought of the remaining six.

He admits as much on a tearful phone call to his ma, who promises him he doesn’t owe anyone anything, and if he needs to he better get his ass into that doctor’s office or she’ll come and drag him by the ear and drop him at the counsellor’s door herself.

“Don’t you go doing anything stupid, now, John. I didn’t raise a fool.”

And John doesn't. Do anything stupid, that is. But someone does.

Because the mission fucks up, and fucks up in a big way.

It's a recovery mission his squadron all but forces him on, all of them insisting it's his turn, and what did he do to deserve those guys and dolls, huh?

But Ken hadn’t given him the run down of his plane, because he’s taken some PTO, and his replacement ground crew chief was nowhere to be found. And from then on, John just has a bad feeling about the whole thing.

Afterwards, he can't ever remember much, but what it boils down to is two bullets in his shoulder, a dead co-pilot, a murdered political attaché left behind on enemy ground, and a package, called Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal, safe back on American soil. And his superiors patting him on his good shoulder, telling him what a good job he did.

A good fucking job. Like some green kid hadn’t died choking on his own blood, staring at Bucky like he could do something. And a fella in his late 50s, who’d been harping on about his first grandkid, was never going to meet him because his body was never going to make it home.

So, when the doc tells him the physio isn’t working and his mobility is compromised, he barely feels a thing.

Major John Egan. Honourably discharged at twenty-eight.

He’s been warned he might feel a little lost at home. But no one warns him that he’ll mistake a framed photo of his old man as that dead attaché and it would start talking to him: “You left me behind. Who’s going to teach my grandkid ball, now?”

No one tells him he’ll scare the life out of his ma coming home from ladies' brunch, to see John, who’s been standing there God knows how long, still heaving in ragged breaths surrounded by smashed glass with blood running down the hand that holds a sizeable shard of it.

So he agrees to therapy.

It doesn’t go well. Crank sets him up with a friend of his experienced in medically discharged vets, but Bucky can’t disassociate them from the military. They get all mushed up as part of the problem in his head, so he stops going and avoids Cranks calls for a while.

And the dreams get worse. And the sleepwalking hits him like a freight train, although it only happens once. Once is enough.

He ends up on a back road. It’s the only reason, Bucky thinks, he didn’t die. He veers between the grassy verge and the road. It’s dark and he’s wearing all black, and the car doesn’t see him before it’s too late. They weren’t going too fast, but they clip him all the same and he wakes up in a hospital.

And the docs have evidently spoken to his ma, because whilst they’re treating his physical wounds, someone comes for a psyche eval and he gets a stern warning that either he gets proper counselling voluntarily, or he’ll legally be forced to. A much less pleasant experience.

And he meets the driver who clipped him. A shorter guy called Curt who walks in rubbing the back of his neck and not quite able to look John in the eye until he says, “Irish, huh? That how you didn’t hit the bullseye? Too short to see over the steering wheel?”

Curt cackles and the two of them talk easy after that.

In fact, John finds it easier to talk to Curt than anyone else since he left the air force. He tells Curt about the disillusionment of it all, the anger, the dreams, all of it. And Curt understands because he used to be in the medical corps and he knows there are things you can’t unsee. Some things a man just can’t reckon with himself.

But, Curt also tells him about the horse ranch he goes to, that helped him when no shrink or medication could.

Cleven Ranch he calls it, and tells John that when he’s up and ready, he’ll take him there.

[sher-ee]

He said it. He said all of it.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[pratchettquotes]

There'll come a time when it'll all be clear, Sweeper had said. A perfect moment.

The occupants of these graves had died for something. In the sunset glow, in the rising of the moon, in the taste of the cigar, in the warmth that comes from sheer exhaustion, Vimes saw it.

History finds a way. The nature of events changed, but the nature of the dead had not. It had been a mean, shameful little fight that ended them, a flyspecked footnote of history, but they hadn't been mean or shameful men. They hadn't run, and they could have run with honor. They'd stayed, and he wondered if the path had seemed as clear to them as it did to him now. They'd stayed not because they wanted to be heroes, but because they chose to think of it as their job, and it was in front of them--

"I'll be off then, sir," said Reg, shouldering his shovel. He seemed a long way away. "Sir?"

"Yeah, right. Right, Reg. Thank you," mumbled Vimes, and in the pink glow of the moment watched the corporal march down the darkening path and out into the city.

John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil "Snouty" Clapman, Ned Coates, and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there.

He felt privileged to have been there twice.

Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[walk-to-gallows]

It drives me to the edge of insanity that people seem to think that John’s only motivation for becoming a hunter was revenge.

That man was absolutely fucking terrified, for himself, for his sons, for everyone on earth, revenge can’t compare to how much fear drove him.

[temeyes]

the Captain and his Baby Captains!!!! [Ghost | Soap | Gaz]

[ghcstao3]

Retirement is supposed to be peaceful—at least, that's what Price had told Ghost. He'd said that, while the quiet is unnerving at first, you settle into it relatively easily until it's something in which you find solace. You learn to relax your shoulders if only a little bit, and you rediscover small joys you had completely forgotten about when your entire life was routine, routine, routine.

And now Ghost is starting to believe that the old bastard had been lying to him if only to talk him down from a ledge.

Because retirement is anything but peaceful. Sure, it's nice to be able to cook his own meals and have more downtime for his reading, and sure, it's nice to not have to be so hyper-vigilant in his own space for once—but God knows he knows nothing of the experience of silence when his neighbour is so goddamn loud.

Maybe it's Ghost's fault for choosing to live in a flat—he could find himself a home in the countryside without issue, he's sure of it, if only it didn't require so much effort and paperwork—but at the same time, he feels totally blameless. Because he is.

His neighbour, however, is not.

Now, Ghost has never encountered this person before. Never ended up stepping out as the same time as them, never bothered to introduce himself when he moved in. All he knows is that the person directly across the hall from him has no concept of respecting one's neighbours in terms of volume.

Be it making a racket in the wee hours when, presumably, making breakfast, or be it playing music or movies far too loud, or hell, be it talking to themselves about something Ghost needn't know the gist of, whoever it is knows no quiet. And it's getting on Ghost's last nerve.

He doesn't feel it quite warrants a formal noise complaint, but he does think it needs an intervention. If Ghost had to be forced out of the military due to injury, he's very well going to make the most out of his retirement.

Which involves silence.

Ghost waits until he knows his neighbour is home, if evidenced by the loud clashing of pots and pans in their kitchen, to go over and knock to finally, hopefully talk something out, but he too soon discovers that the plan is entirely useless.

Because as Ghost knocks and knocks, it's as if his neighbour doesn't hear him. Even in the lulls of little to no noise, there's absolutely no response. It's unbelievable.

He knows confrontation isn't everybody's thing—it's barely his own—but Christ. At least he'd answer the door.

Ghost leaves a note instead. Slips it beneath the door and retires to his own flat, hoping that his neighbour could at least bother to read.

And they must. Because Ghost realizes, over the course of the next few days, he can finally hear his own thoughts again.

A week goes by, and it's blissfully quiet. Maybe Price hadn't been such a liar after all.

Two weeks go by, and... Ghost realizes that no, Price is still a liar. The complete silence isn't peaceful at all, not when he'd grown so accustomed to noise.

Maybe Ghost had overreacted.

He's on his feet and across the hall before he has time to think about it, fist hovering over the door, unsure if he should knock. It didn't work last time, but he feels an apology should be spoken, not written, so certainly it's worth—

The lock on the other side clicks, and suddenly Ghost has no choice. The door swings open to finally reveal his mystery neighbour, and... oh.

Oh.

"Well, hello. Can I help you wi' somethin'?"

Ghost tries not to wince at the man's volume, though he doesn't think he's all that successful. Years of wearing a mask had not done well for him and keeping his expressions schooled.

But loudness aside... the lilt of his neighbour's Scottish accent is otherwise... pleasant. Rough in a way Ghost finds far too enticing, and brimming with life in a way his own deadpan never has been.

He tries not to linger on that thought.

"I'm..." Ghost wets his lips, feeling strangely nervous. "I wanted to apologize for my note. It wasn't very... it was rude. So I'm... sorry."

Since when is talking to new people nerve-wracking for him? Ghost must be going soft.

The man tilts his head. There's a slight furrow in his brow, and Ghost assumes it's because he's recalling the note to put a face to its scribbled words.

Ghost assumes wrong.

"Sorry, could you... repeat that for me?"

Ghost frowns. That was... not at all what he was expecting. So much for apologizing for his own note when his neighbour is going to be a prick anyway.

He opens his mouth to bite back a response, but not before his neighbour's eyes are widening and he's frantically gesturing in surrender.

"I don't mean to... I'm only asking because I'm deaf," the man hurriedly explains. "I don't... I've never been good at readin' lips."

And, well. If that doesn't answer every one of Ghost's questions.

His first thought is that he'd been stupid for not thinking of the possibility. His second is thank God for Roach.

Tentatively, Ghost raises his hands, a little out of practice but familiar nonetheless with sign language. Now he just feels even more like an arse.

"Want to apologize," Ghost repeats. "For the note."

A grin slowly appears on his neighbour's face at the use of sign, responding with enthusiasm despite the rocky start and the reason for Ghost's being there.

"My fault," the man says, shaking his head. "Never realize how loud I'm being."

"Still sorry." Ghost offers out one of his hands, finger-spelling with the other, "Simon."

"John," the man replies aloud, his smile warm as he shakes Ghost's hand. There's an awkward moment after their hands fall back to their sides, and for a second Ghost considers just turning and leaving, but thankfully John saves him from that.

"Well, I have to get to the shops," John says, and right, he'd just been leaving, "but I'll see you around?"

Ghost nods, and that seems to be enough for John to brush past, closing his door behind him.

That was certainly... something. At the very least, a better outcome than Ghost had been anticipating.

He should call Price. Tell the man that his idea of retirement is entirely twisted—because clearly he doesn't have a neighbour like John, who Ghost fears just might find a way to worm himself into Ghost's post-military life one way or another.

Maybe he shouldn't have left that note after all.

[opal-owl-flight]

I think 3 should be allowed to be salty. As a treat.

[greenlaut]

they’re in love your honor

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[saints-who-never-existed]

I mean, fair play to the man actually, it is quite a cute sign of Crozier's care for and knowledge of his crew that he knows offhand Diggle will like getting the pick of his personal stores, and the challenge of creating a fancy meal for the impending visitors - "He'll enjoy that!" :)

[middlingmay]

Horse Trainer Gale x Veteran Buck AU Part 2

Read Part I here.

John's not at the hospital long. He doesn't need surgery or even so much as a stitch.

The psychiatrists who'd been on him ever since his ma spilled the beans about his struggles after coming home from the Air Force finally ease up when he tells them about Cleven Ranch, and that another vet is going to take him there once he's out and up and around. He isn't 100% sure he's going to take Curt up on his offer, but if it gets them off his back.

But then he sees his ma's relief and that convinces him to at least think about it a little more before writing it off entirely.

He and Curt meet up as soon as walking around doesn't feel like dragging a sack full of bruises around.

He tells himself he'll ask Curt about the Ranch but can't quite bring himself to. And it turns out they have plenty to talk about anyway. They swap stories, some lighter, some morbid and they laugh at them anyway. Curt tells him about how his brief encounter with the Air Force during an evac had him bailing out over Scotland, and John tells him about the time Benny smuggled a dog home from Iceland and made him everybody's problem.

It becomes a regular thing. They meet up at bars and restaurants and cafes. They go to a few local sports games. Curt eventually meets John's ma. He'd been frightened to meet her after practically running her son over, but she sweeps him into a hug because she's seen more of her son in the last few weeks than she has since he's been back. What are a few bruises compared to that?

A couple of months go by before John bites the bullet as says to Curt, "So this ranch. Is it a bunch of hippy dippy docs gettin' ya to weave straw baskets and daisy chains, and wanting you to talk about your feelings?"

Curt snorts at him. "Sure. If by that you mean shovelling wheelbarrows full of shit - literal wheelbarrows - and labouring in the middle of the afternoon in the heat, with the most uncommunicative man you're ever going to meet."

And John smells a scam. Some rancher using vets struggling with civilian life for free labour under the guise of therapy. Or, he would have, if Curt hadn't looked so damn sincere. And Curt doesn't strike him as someone easy to fool. Or someone who'd tolerate it.

She he gives in and agrees to visit and see what it's like. Curt picks him up and John's ma sends them off with a thermos full of coffee, a full crumb cake, and sandwiches laden heavy with fillings.

God John loves her.

It takes over an hour to get there. John's silent on the ride and Curt lets him be.

Eventually, they pull up a dirt track through land choc full of fields and paddocks and woody patches. It's a decent stretch of land - a few acres at least.

The main building is a generous stone cottage, and there's an eve bigger two-storey barn right next door. Curt tells him the barn is mostly accommodation for clients and storage, and the cottage is for meals, socialising and is where Gale sleeps - as well as any staff who needs bed for the night. The stables with the horses are further into the property, and John feels relief at that and tries not to let it show.

Curt stops a woman and asks where Gale is. She's beautiful and holds herself like a General or two John has known in his time. When she clocks John she turns to Curt and says, "This him?"

So it's also the day he finds out Curt is a total gossip.

Marge sends them into the barn. It's not too busy. Mostly full of people working: carrying, fixing and cleaning things. Others simply talk it up, or sit squashed into corners scribbling in journals.

Right at the back is a man surrounded by equestrian equipment. He looks up when they approach and John tries not to swallow his own tongue.

Because this alone is worth the trip. This might be the most beautiful man John's ever seen.

He has golden hair and tanned skin dotted with dark spots that make John want to play connect the dots. His lips are pursed around a toothpick. His jaw is sharp, his neck slender and long, and he has good wide shoulders and long legs encased in denim that had no business wrapping around a man's ass like that.

There there are his eyes. John has seen the bluest skies and flown over the bluest oceans, and not one of them were as bright and crystal clear as Gale's eyes.

"Right, Bucky." Curt elbows him and John comes back to earth. Gale's assessing him, up and down, and John is faced with the rare urge to shy away.

Curt rolls his eyes and introduces them properly. John is so distracted by the length of Gale's fingers and the grace of his hands and the low timbre of his voice as he tells John it's nice to meet him, that it takes a minute to sink in.

"Cleven? As in Cleven Ranch?"

Gale nods. "That's right. S'my ranch."

And John could cry because of course he's found the most beautiful creature on this earth, only to find out he's essentially long to be his therapist if he sticks with this.

And he needs to stick with this. He can't keep doing this to his ma.

Gale takes one look at John's shoulders and he's smothering a smile and beckoning John to follow him. John's feet obey without his input.

Gale leads them outside to a pile of strong wooden beams, and tells them they're building a medical station for the horses to treat any minor issues that come up.

Curt and John are put to work loading the beams onto a truck and then dragging them off again and onto the build site.

And because John is a social sort, he talks to everyone and learns that most of his assumptions about this place are wrong.

Gale isn't a therapist. he's genuinely just a rancher and business owner. No one here is forced to talk, and if they want to it's normally to each other.

The idea behind the place is the hard physical work it takes to keep it running tires out the body and quietens the mind, Then, over time, this helps people reach the emotional stability required to work with the horses. They dook donations, not fees, and people were only required to pay if they stayed the night - for food and utilities.

John also learns that Gale rarely speaks and rarely socialises with the clients. But he's everyone's favourite and leads by a steady, confident example that folks here wanted to follow.

Throughout the afternoon John catches Gale watching, or working nearby. Curt sees it too and looks at him funny. But when he calls out for Gale to join them, Gale ducks his head and shuffles off.

At the end of the day when Curt's saying his goodbyes and John's waiting for him by his car, his sun is blocked out and he looks up to see Gale with his hands in his pockets (seriously, how do they fit in jeans that tight?), rocking on the heels of his boots.

John, unusually tongue-ties only manages a garbled "Hey." But it makes Gale smile at his boots and look up at him through gold flecked lashes.

After a few moments of silence, as John's brain screams at him to say something, Gale asks, "What do you think of the ranch?"

"It's not what I thought it'd be, I'll admit." And when John tells Gale about what he had expected - all the emotional poking and prodding he wasn't comfortable with - Gale rolls his eyes but can't fight down a little laugh.

"I can't imagine anything worse," he says. "People prying into a man's business like that."

John thinks it's a good thing, too. if it's Gale doing the asking, he might just tell him anything.

"You, uh," Gale kicks some gravel around. "You think you'll come back? Looked like you were getting on with everyone."

John tries not to look smug that Gale has been paying attention to him so much today. So instead he smiles crooked, his dimples running deep on one side, and says, "Count on it, Buck. I'll be here."

[ghiertor-the-gigapeen]

When law is too mainstream

[spooksicl-e]

do you think he’s more of a honk shoo honk shoo or a snork mimimimi type of guy

[the-whispers-of-death]

Veteran!141 AU

This is a masterlist for the Veteran!141 AU. Each Reader is different and unique to the veteran 141 member. Currently, Ghost and Price's Readers have been created, but the other two 141 members will be added.

Ghost:

DILF!Reader

Price:

Baker!Reader

This may not be a completed list (it may be expanded upon)!

[mesenterydeimos]

i dont have much ideas to draw sowwy