Work Text:
Marge’s words won’t get out of John’s head the whole drive down to Wyoming. It’s been months since he’s seen them. Too long, separated by work and threaded together by as many scarce, crackling phone calls he could manage. The last one— Marge’s words— reverberate in his mind like the boneshatter of a crash landing.
Gale’s worse, and I don’t know what to do.
He hadn’t needed her elaboration but it came anyway. Her voice, usually so mellifluous, was strained and stilted like she was trying not to choke. The over-working, the excuses, the dinners going untouched on the table. The arguing, usually so rare and easily reconcilable, becoming repetitive, deflective, dizzily vicious. John hates that the most. The way he’s felt first-hand the noisy tendrils of Gale’s particular neurosis twisting his calm, grounded self into something that makes an enemy of any concern. A cup of cocoa becomes an insidious suspicion. A joint of lamb, lovingly roasted, becomes a fresh war.
It’s cold for March, and John knows that’s why now. The bottle tempts him at the same time each year. But John bites back the temptation more often than not these days, and either way, it’s cold. Marge said Gale’s nailbeds had turned blue.
She greets him at the door in a whirlwind of radiating panic and gratitude. Her hair is undone, her face clean of makeup, and John kisses her despite it all because he’s missed her, and she looks beautiful, and he’s scared, too.
“Where is he?” John says. Marge bites her lip and looks to the stairs.
“Took me so long to get him to come inside last night,” she’s talking hushed, taking John’s bags and his coat. The fire in the hearth is burning, heating the whole house. “Wouldn’t come in for dinner, said he was working on the car and I tried to take some food out to him but his hands were covered in oil. He’s always got a reason, I—”
John shushes her as her eyes start to shine. He’s only seen her cry a handful of times. More than a couple over this. Marge takes a breath, sags into his arms a little and speaks softer into his throat.
“I got him inside around midnight. He was freezing, John. He’s not moved since.”
John draws a deep breath of his own. Strokes a hand through the back of her hair until she’s steeled herself, sniffing and straightening up.
“He eaten today?”
She looks grimly at him in answer. “I don’t have the energy for that fight now. Lord knows he doesn’t.”
John nods and grits his teeth. Toes off his shoes, thick socks soundless against the wooden floors. “Make yourself a coffee, darlin’. I’ll go.”
⋆⭒˚.⋆
Gale’s curled on his side with the covers pulled up to his ears. It does little to hide how bad he looks. John’s breath catches despite his mental preparation, eyes following the bony hand poking out to the sharp rise of Gale’s exposed cheekbone. John swallows and edges closer. Takes that bony hand— frozen— and runs his fingers over the dry, cracked knuckles.
“Hey, Buck.”
Gale opens his eyes slowly. They settle on John’s face just as slow, shadowed, half-lidded and dull. “Thought you were workin’ still.” His voice is slush behind his teeth.
“Got our girl scared,” John says, taking note of the flatness of Gale’s tone, the complete and utter lack of emotion or surprise. His body is on autopilot; John recognises the tells. Grinding through the motions to keep going, blank and perfunctory like those last days of the march. “Got me scared, too, babydoll.”
And he is. Primed or not by Gale’s previous bouts of fasting, John’s never seen him push it like this. He's terrified.
It was always just a day or so: before a mission or after a particularly rough one. A week or so, when less of their boys came back than flew out, and Gale would tell him it made it easier to concentrate. To numb out the nerves. The scrawniest he’d got was in the stalag, when all of them where whittled down and angular.
John guessed it would continue after the war. It was something that had always been with Gale, and everything they saw wasn’t going to pull it out of him, rather drive it further in. But John had convinced him to reign it in. Had thought— after spending hours pleading Gale’s case, once they’d caught him in the infirmary, vomiting up any nutrients they were trying to get back inside him— that he’d stop it.
John doesn’t know what the fuck has happened.
“Buck, what’s going on? How’s it got like this?”
Gale blinks sluggishly at him, like the words are taking an age to reach his brain, before he shrugs one-shouldered and half-awake. “Didn’t think it would.”
“Gotta give me more than that,” John presses.
He wants to know, knows that Marge wants to know, but more than anything he wants to keep Gale talking. He slips a subtle finger to the pulse point in his neck, and relaxes slightly at the feeling of his heartbeat; strong. He’s sure, then, that Gale’s just exhausted himself. That his body has crashed after running on empty for so long. But there’s still a heavy knot in his stomach at the feel of Gale’s collar bones as John slides his hand lower beneath the covers, beneath the sweater and the shirt and the vest Gale has on underneath.
“Buck, baby, talk to me. I missed you. Didn’t you miss me?”
Gale looks at him then with more clarity than he has since John went to him. He frowns. Moves his chilly fingers to clasp either side of John’s face, and on shaky arms he pushes himself up to kiss him. Says at John’s lips, “Don’t ask me that.”
John presses their foreheads together and sighs. Gale sighs too, although it’s more like a rush of air as he drops back to the mattress. John follows him. Dips his head and keeps their faces close, tucking Gale’s hair back behind his ear and stroking his temple.
“Are you okay?” he whispers. “Gale, are you alright?”
Gale laughs, another weak sound full of breath. “Thought I was. Thought I was makin’ things easier. I couldn’t sleep, for a bit. Head got so full of everything, wasn’t— present for Marge.” He’s saying each word with a sharp exhale, like it’s all so much effort. Speaking, thinking. Living in it. John bites the inside of his cheek as his chest aches. “Was easier for a while. Somethin’ simple.”
John nods. When Gale doesn’t continue, he says, “Something to control.”
“Y’always said I was a control freak,” Gale smiles. John can feel it close to his mouth, and he pulls back a fraction just to see it. Gale’s lips are split. He’s so, so pale.
“Marge wants to call the doctor,” John says. Gale’s smile drops. “I want you to eat. Just a little.”
“I can’t,” Gale shakes his head, and John doesn’t know which idea he’s rejecting more.
“You have to stop this.”
It’s harsher than John intends. Louder, and Gale flinches back with a wince. John’s lost. The fear is clawing inside his neck, now, Gale’s bones everywhere he can touch, and he doesn’t know what the fuck has happened.
“Baby,” he begs, quieter, tighter in the back of his throat like it’s getting squeezed out. “I love you. Please eat something. I love you.”
He knows it doesn’t work that way. Gale loved John all the way through the booze, and John only cut back when he was good and ready.
It just feels like the only ammunition he’s got.
Gale looks at him, hollow, swallowing down the bitten skin of his lips.
⋆⭒˚.⋆
John bargains with a mug of warm milk and honey. He sits one side of Gale in his and Marge’s bed, Gale propped up against him to take tiny sips, his shoulder blades digging hard into John’s side. Marge is curled around Gale’s front. One of her arms is flung across his lap, fingers entwined in John’s, creating a barrier for any warmth they can capture between them.
“One of you's gonna have to shift when the doc gets here,” Gale says gruffly. He hesitates, before going for another, slightly larger sip.
None of them make any attempt to move. John runs his free hand up and down Gale’s arm, whilst Marge fiddles with the hem of his sweater. Gale continues— slowly, shakily— to drink.
Marge’s fingers twitch in John’s hold, and he looks down at her. A small smile, sad, nervous, but sincere as she mouths at him; thank you.