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John's face aches and throbs with the force of the smile that breaks out over it the second he hears Buck’s honey smooth drawl. It’s the first time he's smiled in days, though it feels like it's been far longer. He breaks into an all-out grin once he sees Buck's face, dry lips cracking open and fresh blood seeping into his mouth that he has to spit into the dirt as they're marched into the camp.
The pain doesn't matter, not in his face or his head or his ribs, not in his heart. He can barely feel any of it for the force of the relief that hits him, the gratitude to a higher power that he's not sure he ever believed in for seeing Buck down safe. The selfish gladness that for whatever reason he was brought here and that John found him, through death and destruction he made it back to Buck.
The relief is so overwhelming that he stumbles for a moment when Buck smiles at him through the fence, his knees locking to keep him upright and lurching forward with the rest of the bodies around him.
He's made it through hell and out the other side, but he would be lying if he said he wouldn't have put up with even worse if he'd known this was what was waiting for him on the other side.
It's hours before John gets to see him again. He has to go through clearance and processing first, then gets marched into a room with yet another Luftwaffe fuck who tries one last time to squeeze any information out of him, though with far less effort than the bastard at the Dulag.
Once they turn him loose into the main camp with a shiny new tag around his neck he stumbles outside into greasy autumn sunshine that’s already starting to fade. He hears something scuff through the dirt and he turns towards it.
Buck is leaning against one of the huts, tucked into his greatcoat to stay out of the wind.
He’s lost track of the actual days that had gone by since Buck went down, but he knows it hasn’t actually been that long. Not long enough for anything about him to change, and certainly not as long as they were apart when John first shipped out to England, but it had still been the longest few days of his fucking life. Days of Buck being dead and a gaping black void in his life, a pit under his ribs where Buck should have been. Days of not knowing how to carry on except to aim himself at the enemy and take down as many of them as he could before they got him.
Buck smiles as he stands up straight. His mouth shapes itself like a smirk, though it’s never as never as cruel as one. It’s habitually sloped for him to keep his damn toothpick in place even when he doesn’t have one, and John is struck again with the reality that Buck is here. Buck is alive, right in front of him, almost close enough to touch.
The phantom throb of grief at his core is overlapped by the feeling of balance that always comes when Buck is by his side.
He finally unsticks his legs from the ground and closes the distance between them, pulling Buck into a hug that would be embarrassingly emotional if Buck wasn’t squeezing him just as tight. His ribs burn under the force of it, but he doesn’t care. He won’t let go until he’s good and ready.
Buck gives him a vague rundown of the camp and who else is here before he leads him into their hut where his shoulders and ribs take another beating from the amount of back slaps and bone rattling handshakes. Hambone, Benny, Murph, Crank, Brady. It’s fucking good to see all of them, and a weight off his shoulders knowing that they might be down but they’re not out just yet.
He holds onto Brady a little longer than the others, a silent thanks for not letting him do something stupid like go down with the plane.
It doesn’t take long for the last few days to catch up with him though. The adrenaline has almost worn off now that he’s stopped moving and there’s no one there to force him to keep marching. Nowhere left for him to go but here.
Buck pushes him down into a chair and sends one of the guys to go fetch a doctor to look him over after he winces one too many times. He gets a hell of a grilling from him and Brady in tandem — one that rivals any post-op interrogation — while the doc is poking in all of the places that hurt the most, but he never once stops smiling.
The reality of the situation doesn’t escape him. Far from it, in truth. He knows he only narrowly made it here, and he knows he needs time to heal. He knows he’s probably burned through at least six of his nine lives by now. He knows they’re all stuck in this fucking stalag until they make a run for it or until they get shot.
But of all the days he’s had since the war became real and not just another training exercise, of all the missions he made it back from and the one he didn’t, this is still one of the sweetest. It feels like a second chance, or a third or a fourth. It might have almost killed him to get here, but it was worth it in the end.
He falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pathetic excuse for a pillow in his bunk. His body finally gives out on him and the ache in his bones is too much to ignore. But the relief of being back with his guys — seeing that they made it in one piece — soothes him until he’s unconscious.
The sound of bodies crammed together in a tiny room soothes his nerves. Shuffling and grunting, snoring and coughing. It’s like a lullaby to him now settling something deep inside him that he hadn’t realised was missing after he went down until just now. The silence of the dulag cell and the distant rumbling of artillery in the forest were jarring, off-putting each in their own way. But this is the sound he’s heard every night since his first day at basic, the sound that makes safety and security.
It might be a little different now, not quite as safe as the barracks back at the base, but it still has the same effect on him anyway.
That night is possibly the best sleep he’s ever had in his life. Deep and dreamless and filled with the ease that comes with being back with the men. Back with Buck.
— — —
When John wakes up the sun is already well on its way to the zenith, looking watery and gray through late October cloud. The hut is empty but for a figure hunched over a book at the rickety little table in the middle of the room. It’s a figure he’d know anywhere — in the dark, in a cockpit, in his office helping draft letters home to the families of lost men.
Buck doesn’t move other than to turn the page so John takes the opportunity to really take him in. The sweep of blonde-tipped hair, the slope of his shoulders, the curve of his jaw and the way the muscles tense as if he still has a pick in his mouth. Clearly it’s a habit not easily broken. A habit that always looked good on him, so maybe it’s a good thing that the muscle memory will take time to fade.
In the daylight — and without his eyes blurring from exhaustion — he can see that Buck’s face actually has changed in the time they’d been apart, if only slightly. There are barely healed cuts on the side of his face that John can see, little pink marks almost hidden in his hairline. He wonders if they came from flak and glass in the cockpit, or if he caught himself on the way out of his fort. Maybe he got them on the ground, maybe he got them after he was captured.
He’ll ask Buck about them eventually. Maybe when he’s ready to bear to answer the questions that Buck will ask him in return about his own injuries and how he got them.
For now he just drinks in the details greedily even though he’s long since memorized them a hundred times over. But the last time he saw Buck was before he went to London in the officers club and he hadn’t been paying as close attention as he should have been. Too many distractions, too much shit going on in his head. He let himself get complacent — Dye’s 25 missions made it suddenly seem possible that both of them had a chance of making it home.
He hadn’t been looking at the curve of Buck’s lips as he smiled at whatever Benny and Douglass were talking about. He didn’t watch Buck’s clever fingers steady as ever around the coke he’d been nursing all night. All he remembers is the figure of him spinning around all of the couples on the dance floor with Meatball in his arms and the wink he’d thrown over his shoulder at him.
And then for a while that had been the last time he’d ever see Buck alive. And it hadn’t been enough.
The phantom grief fills his lungs with lead as he lies there remembering those days without him, the sight of him whole and healthy in front of him not quite enough to chase it away yet. It’ll take more than a few days for it to feel real, he thinks. For him not to worry that Buck will disappear like a dream as soon as he touches him, or for him not to wake up with the hollow cavity under his ribs that reminds him of what he almost lost.
Eventually John works himself upright, a groan ripped unwillingly from his throat as his body protests. His mind might be desperate to forget Rüsselsheim but his body will carry it for a while longer yet.
Buck turns at the noise, poorly hidden concern covered with a forced smile as he watches John struggle into an upright position.
“Morning Sleeping Beauty,” Buck says, not quite as jovial as John is sure he’d like to sound, “thought you were gonna spend the whole day in bed.”
“Yeah well, with five-star digs like this can you blame me? Best sleep of my life.”
He almost falls over when he stands up from the bunk. It’s only the grip he has on the wooden strut that keeps him upright, and he stumbles his way across the short distance between him and the table. Buck jerks and clenches his hand like he wants to help but John is glad that he doesn’t. He’s helped John back to the base so many times with a shoulder wedged under his arm and one around John’s waist, but they both know there’s a difference between being drunk and the state he’s in now. Shot down and beat to hell, but he can still stand under his own power. Mostly, anyway.
It’s the little things that make the difference.
He collapses down into one of the chairs at the table, ignoring the way it sways and squeaks at his weight. All of six steps and he can already feel the prickle of sweat at his hairline from the pain, but he did it.
Buck ignores the obvious strain and nudges a mess tin full of thin congealed gruel.
”You missed breakfast, though I’d treat you to room service.” His smile is small but genuine and it’s one of the best things John has ever seen.
His stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly in the quiet of the hut and they both huff out a laugh. He doesn’t remember the last time he actually ate something. The cabbage leaves he’d eaten in the field just after he made it to ground were barely enough to line his stomach, and it didn’t take long for them to make a reappearance after the farmer clobbered him over the head.
The gruel is just as bad as it looks, somehow both too thick and too thin at the same time and even worse than the porridge they served at the base. He eats it all anyway, swallowing it in huge mouthfuls almost too quick to taste anything. Buck watches him shovel it down and doesn’t bother to pretend he isn’t. Ever the mother hen, making sure everyone gets three square meals a day and brushes their teeth before dinner.
“Where are all the boys?” John asks once he’s finished. His stomach feels a little less like it’s about to crawl out of his throat now that it’s been fed.
“Making use of the facilities.”
John quirks an eyebrow. “We have facilities?”
”Nothing like the luxury of Thorpe Abbots, obviously,” Buck says with a roll of his eyes, “I may as well give you the grand tour, if you’re feeling up to it?”
John isn’t feeling all that up to it actually, but that isn’t going to stop him. He could use some fresh air anyway.
— — —
Buck takes him out into the yard to give him a proper look around at what they’re working with. The camp seems far more gray and dreary today, apparently no longer rose-tinted from the sheer relief he felt at hearing Buck’s voice again when he thought he never would. The warmth of the sun is starting to wane and the shadows are icy cold even in the middle of the day, the wooden huts look sad, the paths between them already turning to mud.
It’s spartan at best and actively awful if he’s being completely honest. But still, there’s nowhere that Buck can’t make better just by being there. He leads the way and John pretends not to notice that Buck has slowed down enough that he doesn’t have to fight to keep up with until the stiffness in his muscles eases. He falls into line half a step behind him and lets Buck tell him who else he’s found in the camp.
Their places are usually reversed — Buck bringing up the rear while John charges ahead, him finding trouble and Buck watching his 6 o’clock. They’re equals, partners in crime. John leading from the front and Buck leading from the rear but always making sure their guys make it home. Until now.
John shakes his head and continues to follow Buck. He’d follow Buck anywhere.
As they walk he watches the way other men react, ones from the Hundredth and ones John has never seen before. They look to Buck first and then nod to John after, even when it’s guys they trained and flew with back in England. Buck is what they need here, more than ever. He’s steady and dependable, someone who has more than enough experience soothing the ruffled feathers of egos and tempers a little too big to fit in a room together.
Buck is calm and rational, steady like an old oak or boulder in a field. You can count on him even if there’s nothing else. He’s a good guy to have in a pinch, just the same as he’s a good guy to have by anyone’s side.
There have only been two times that John can remember where he didn’t want Buck right next to him.
The first time was John’s first mission in England where he found himself desperately gripping the yoke to keep the fort steady and thanking any lucky stars he had left that Buck was still in the States. He was still at a base with hot showers and mostly-soft racks instead of dodging clouds of flak and trying to keep his crew alive. He both knew they’d be up there together eventually, but he needed that first time alone to keep his head straight. He doesn’t know if he’d have been able to get their plane home on that first mission if he’d have been worrying about Buck at the same time.
The second time came last night, if only for a brief moment. When the relief of Buck being alive gave way to the conflict of their reality he wished just for a moment that Buck had never gone down, that he was still in England even if it meant that John had to stay here. But as soon as he thought it his stomach twisted with a new fear — if Buck really was still flying missions without him he could have gone down at any point and John might never have known what happened to him. Any one of them could have been the end of Gale Cleven and John wouldn’t have been there to stop it, just like he wasn’t there this time.
But in that reality John wouldn’t have been able to find him. And in that reality John might not have gotten the second chance he has now.
And so he allows himself the selfish thought that he's glad they're stuck here because they're stuck here together. John will be beside him no matter what happens and he's not going to lose him. If Buck goes anywhere John will be following him, whether that's through the fence into the forest and back home or into darkness.
They can keep the men together, they can make a run for it, they can do anything because it's the two of them. John and Gale. Buck and Bucky. Until the end, whatever that end may be.
The walk around the camp becomes too much for John quicker than he'd like to admit. He doesn't admit it at all, his body betraying him by stumbling over his own feet that have become heavy and sluggish, and he walks into Buck who has to steady him with a hand on his back. They both know John won't let him help him back to his bunk so Buck pulls him down to sit on the stoop of the nearest hut until he's strong enough to make it back.
The hut is near one of the fences but falls between two guard towers and isn't fully built yet – half of it is still just a timber frame – which means they're mostly out of sight of anyone.
John is glad for the privacy. Every part of his body hurts and it's hard for him to fully catch his breath around the sharp ache of his ribs. He can feel his pulse in the side of his head and around the eye that's still swollen most of the way shut, and he has to shove his hands between his knees to hide how hard they're shaking.
Buck doesn't comment on it, just sits beside him close enough that John could lean on him if he wanted to. After a few moments of hesitation he does, letting his muscles loosen against Buck's side. He might not let him help him back to their hut but he'll let him hold him up like this, in small ways that only they can see. The way they've always been.
“Bein’ in a place like this makes me sorry I didn't take you up on your offer,” Buck says after a few minutes. John's hands have mostly stopped shaking now. “London would have been nice.”
“Only being in a place like this? Geez Buck, kick a guy while he's down why don't you.”
Buck smiles and huffs out a laugh, as rueful as it is amused.
“You needed to let go for a while, let off some steam away from the base. You wouldn't have done that if I was there with you.”
“Says who?” John raises an eyebrow.
Buck just watches him for a moment, still smiling but it almost looks a little sad. John doesn't know what it means.
“You sayin’ a couple of cokes over dinner and an early night would have been your idea of a good time? What happened to wanting to paint the town red ?”
John doesn't know how to tell Buck that as long as they were there together he'd have gotten what he needed from his break, whether it was taking a beautiful woman to bed or playing fucking snap with Buck in a hotel lounge. He doesn't want to tell Buck that if they were there together that neither of them would have gone down and neither of them would be here right now to even have this conversation.
“Oh we'd have gotten into some trouble Buck,” he says eventually, a smile forced onto his face that matches Buck's, “I'd have made sure of it.”
— — —
The cold is harsh once the dark sets in, but it's not as harsh as the way he presses his lips to Buck's. It’s hard enough to reopen the split in John’s lip again but he doesn’t care, he barely feels it. He’s half crazed with the need to feel Buck against him, grasping at him like a man about to drown and clinging to anything he can to keep his head above water. Buck grabs him just as hard, pulling John against him and trapping himself between John’s body and the wall of the little library room at the end of the hut.
He never thought he’d get to have Buck like this, to feel him hot and hard and so fucking alive against him. There’s no way he’s going to be able to give it up again, not now that he’s tasted Buck’s mouth and his own blood on Buck’s tongue. He’s selfish like that, always the sinner to Buck’s saint, leaving him down a path of temptation and away from the light. He’ll wrap his arms and his legs around Buck and bare his teeth at anything that tries to take this away from him.
“We shouldn’t be doing this here, anyone could walk in,” Buck pants into his mouth at the same time as he unbuttons John’s pants to slip his hand inside. “Fuck, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again Bucky.”
”Wasn’t gonna go and leave you all alone,” John replies between biting kisses, “who else would look after you, huh?”
He feels the way Buck shakes against him, from laughter and from something else entirely. Something that John feels echoing in his own chest.
He’s desperate to feel Buck properly — skin to skin and the thrum of his heart and his lungs under his hands. He fights his way through layers of wool and cotton until he has what he wants, soft skin and a smattering of hair on his chest laid out for him like paradise. The golden color Algeria left on Buck’s skin has long since faded but even in the dark, milky pale and exposed to the cold he is beautiful. He is alive.
Buck’s hand around his cock breaks his focus, making him gasp and his knees buckle. He has to catch himself against the rough wood of the wall over Buck’s shoulder which just presses them even closer together.
“Am I boring you, Major?” Buck drawls. The rumble of his voice under the hand John still has around his ribs makes his dick jerk in Buck’s hand.
“Far from it.” He moves in for another bruising kiss that knocks Buck’s head against the wall.
And then before he knows it he’s slotting his leg between Buck’s to bring them together, his cock settling into the cradle of Buck’s hip like it was made for him to be there. The soft bitten off breath in his ear tells him that Buck has just had a similar revelation.
He reaches down to pull Buck’s hand out of his pants then rolls their hips together, their dicks lined up under too many layers getting in the way but it’s still one of the best things John has ever felt. Buck slips a hand into his hair to pull him in for a kiss, swallowing the soft groans that neither of them can keep down.
The rutting is good, so fucking good, and it means that John has both of his hands free to fight he way back through the frankly obscene amount of clothing Buck is wearing until he can curl them around Buck’s hips the way he’s wanted to for so long.
His grip is hard, probably too hard. He’s going to have bruises afterward and John feels himself shudder in delight at the concept of being able to mark him like this, leaving a claim under his skin where no one can remove it. Right where he belongs.
Buck doesn’t complain. He rolls his hips just as hard as John does and they’re still kissing, still rutting together, still drinking each other in after too long thinking they’d never see each other again. Days of thinking Buck was dead, weeks and months of John being scared out of his wits that Bucky would go down on a mission, years of wanting to touch him like this but not knowing if he would ever be allowed.
Every step he took after Buck went down was hard, every breath impossible. Struggling to find a reason to carry on with the sucking wound of his chest open to the world. All he wanted to do was live long enough to find him, his body or his plane or something he’d touched. Something to ground him, somewhere to feel close to him.
And he did. He found him. Through darkness and fire and bombs, through death and blood and destruction. He made his way back to Buck just like he always will.
He hears Buck’s voice low and hoarse, muffled between the leather of John’s jacket and the wall, cutting through his thoughts yet again. Finding him inside his own head and bringing him home, just like John found him.
“Not like this Bucky, fuck. Don’t want to be washing come out of my skivvies the whole time we’re here.”
John digs his fingers harder into Buck’s hips while he tries to hold his own still.
“You want my hand?” He asks, pressing a kiss to the barely healed wounds on the side of Buck’s face.
Buck just groans and drops his head to John’s shoulder, a jerk of his hips like it’s just as hard for him to stay still. The puffs of his breath are warm even though the fabric of John’s flight suit.
“Jesus. Yeah, fuck. Give me your hand.”
It takes a bit of rearranging for them to be able to get their hands on each other with the way John refuses to allow more than an inch of space to be between them, the way he can’t stop pressing blood-tinted kisses to Buck’s face and his hair, but they manage it eventually. They both start slow, the frantic pace gentled slightly for the interruption.
“Wish you were still up there, Bucky. Giving ‘em hell for me,” Buck whispers, “but I’m selfish, and I’m glad you’re here.”
John can’t stop himself from shoving Buck harder against the wall, fucking his cock into Buck’s hand the way he’d fuck him for real given half the chance. It’s sloppy and frantic and he doesn’t care. He just needs to feel him.
And Buck takes it. He rides the wave just like he always has, whether it’s the bridge flare of John’s anger or the whiskey-sharp taste of his joy in the middle of a fight. He uses his hand to keep the pace steady, doesn’t let John take over or race towards the end.
“Easy, easy now,” he soothes, gentling him just like John is a horse spooking at shadows.
And he’ll be damned if that isn’t exactly what he feels like these days. Hunted and ready to bolt if not for Buck’s hand steady on the reins.
”Fuck,” he hears himself sob, “ fuck. ” There’s no more fight left in him, all the sharp corners and ragged edges already worn smoother by Buck’s strong and sure fingers.
“There you go, let it all out,” Buck says as he turns his face into John’s neck and kisses the erratic flutter of his pulse.
John comes in Buck’s hand, hips jerking through the aftershocks. He has to lock his knees again to stop himself from stumbling as he catches his breath. It takes him a few moments to pull himself together, coming back to his senses with the slow grind of Buck’s cock against his slackened grip.
He tightens his fingers and twists his wrist to jerk him off properly the way he likes on himself. He knows he’s got it right when Buck grunts and fucks his hips into John’s grip.
”Finally realize it’s not all about you, huh?” Buck smiles against his neck, the stubble on his jaw rasping against sensitive skin.
“Age before beauty, Buck. You know that’s how it goes.”
Buck straightens up then, tips his head back and arches his spine so that he can press his shoulders back against the wood without putting any distance between them.
”You think I’m pretty, John?” He smirks, “that what you tell all the dames?”
”You’re the only gal for me Buck, always have been.”
Buck doesn’t say anything else. He just smiles as his head thunks softly against the wall, eyes closed as he comes into John’s palm with a deep satisfied sigh.
Maybe what John said is a joke. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s both. Buck is the only real relationship he’s ever had, family or otherwise. He has friends at the base sure, but no one like Buck. Buck is different.
He didn’t cry when Curt went down. He didn’t feel much of anything when his Father passed. He sure as shit didn’t lose sleep over anything else going on at the base. Anything that gets to him goes into a trunk in the back of his mind, padlocked and buried under so much junk that he can forget it’s there and he can continue doing what he signed up to do.
Until that morning in London. Until he unfolded the newspaper and a bolt of fear so strong ripped through him that it almost sent him to his knees. Until he heard Bowman’s voice tight and controlled down a tinny line.
He went down swingin’ John.
Buck is it for him, in any way that Buck will have him and for as long as he wants him. He was it from the day he gave Buck half of his name.
Buck’s eyes open again and John smiles at him, even as he begins the awkward process of extracting their hands from each other’s clothes.
“Well, if that’s how you say hello after we’ve only been apart a few days then maybe it was worth it,” Buck smiles while he wipes his hand clean of John’s spend with a rag from his pocket. Once he’s done he pulls John’s hand closer to do the same for him.
John’s stomach turns sharply at the thought of losing Buck again.
“Yeah. Let’s not tempt fate though, huh?” John forces his voice to stay steady. “I’ll say hello like that every damn day if that’s what you want, you don’t gotta get shot down first.”
Buck shoves the rag back into his pocket and stands up straight, buttoning up his shirt.
”That a promise?” He smiles.
John just laughs, a little incredulously.
“Yeah, it’s a damn promise.”