nothing but blue skies
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Summary
Through the smoke, and the noise, and the grief, there’s Bucky.
There’s blood all down the right side of his face, but his eyes are bright, and when he sees Gale his smile is even brighter.
There are so many things he wants to say, so many things he wants to do, but there’s a crowd, and Gale doesn’t think he can find the right words anyway. Not here, not now. What he settles on is eloquent, and he hopes it portrays all of the feeling he puts behind it:
“What took you so long?”
Bucky’s grin widens. He shrugs his shoulders up to his ears and gestures back towards the poor excuse of a plane.
“We took a detour,” he says simply.
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The one where Bucky is temporarily MIA, and Gale loses his mind.
Series
- Part 1 of nothing but blue skies
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Summary
“Don’t you ever, ever, do something that stupid again.” John thinks if he concentrates he can feel the sharp of Gale’s nails through his jacket. “Our time’s gonna come.”
When still, Bucky says nothing, Gale loosens his grip and places his hands softly on either side of John’s head. He places a delicate kiss on his cheek, his forehead, the bridge of his nose.
“You gotta stay with me,” he says, pleading.
I can feel this, Bucky thinks. Let this be the only thing I feel.
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The one where Bucky doesn’t cope very well with being a prisoner of war, and Gale is there to keep him grounded.
Series
- Part 2 of nothing but blue skies
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Summary
“They’d have to catch us first,” Gale counters.
“They’d catch you.”
“Ain’t no bikes around for you to cheat with, Bucky.”
Bucky turns to look at him then, a wide grin slowly slinks its way onto his face. He comes close, leans down, and places a long kiss on Gale’s mouth.
When he pulls back he says, “I don’t need a bike,” and then he takes off running.
It takes a moment for Buck’s brain to catch up, still in the moment ten seconds ago, and then he’s tearing out of the alleyway after him.
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The one where the war ends, and the aftermath comes with both its good, and its bad.
Series
- Part 3 of nothing but blue skies
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Summary
He takes the final step, lifts the lantern to flood the empty station with light, and sees a man laying on his stable floor.
He’s brunette, sweating, breathing unsteadily. There’s blood wiped messily on his forehead, down his neck. Half laying, half sitting up against the stack of haybales Buck keeps at the bottom of this station, he’s got one bloody hand pressed to his right thigh, which is caked with crimson. His other hand rests wearily on the Colt that’s tucked into the waistband of his pants.
Gale’s heart jumps, he wishes suddenly that he really did have a rifle, but when the man sees that Buck’s unarmed he raises the hand slowly, in a shaky surrender.
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“You got a name?” Buck asks, in an attempt to distract.
The stranger swallows and takes a deep breath. “Bucky.”
Buck almost pauses in his work. He scoffs and shakes his head. “I’ll be damned.”
“Why’s that?”
“People call me Buck.”
Bucky huffs out a pained laugh, which quickly devolves into a groan. When he’s finished, he says, “Goddamn fate.”-
The one where stablehand Gale finds outlaw John “Bucky” Egan bleeding out in his stables.
(The sequel, seven miles out of freedom town, has been posted.)
Series
- Part 4 of nothing but blue skies
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Summary
John watched him work for a while, watched the way the dirt fell off his boot, satisfying-like, onto the steps below. Slender fingers worked the brush back and forth, a constant rhythm. Bucky would have quite liked to shut his eyes and listened to the sound, felt the way Gale’s body shifted with each stroke. He could pretend they were somewhere else – the porch of their own house, a summer day, their dog running around the front yard. He’d tip his head onto Gale’s shoulder, and the blonde would put his arm around him, and nothing would ever haunt them again. Not the war, not the memories, not themselves.
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The one where Gale obsesses over cleanliness in the Stalag camp and Bucky does his best to understand.
Series
- Part 5 of nothing but blue skies
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Summary
The cobblestone floor was melded around his left ankle, pinning him to the ground. He reaches back, tries to peel the stone away with his fingernails, but it’s like trying to pry up the Earth itself; a futile waste of time.
Footsteps approach. Gale slowly, slowly, looks up.
Above him, Egan is panting. He’s sweating, curly hair starting to stick to his forehead, and there’s an infuriating, amused smile on his pretty face.
Gale looks up into that enchantress grin and hates him immensely.
“Stuck, are we?” The witch quips lightly, and Gale grinds his teeth. He braces his hands against his thigh, begins to push himself up to standing, but as he gets half-way an unseen power forces him back to his knees.
“Let me go,” Gale says through clenched teeth, all the calm of a sandstorm.
Egan preens. “Say please.”
I am going to tear you apart, Gale thinks. He says: “coward.”
It does nothing to wipe the smile from Egan’s face. He crouches down, balances on the balls of his feet in front of him, and tips his head, regarding. “I find you witch hunters much more agreeable on your knees.”
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The one where Witch Hunter Gale Cleven is tasked with pursuing John Egan, a dangerous Sorcerer.
Series
- Part 6 of nothing but blue skies
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Summary
It had been four years since Gale Cleven had found one “Bucky” Egan almost bleeding to death in his stables, and life had been far better for it.
The town of Lemmon welcomed their new Deputy sincerely, a pleasant change to the lawman who had come before him, and Bucky had responded to their acceptance with pleasing smiles and endearing quips. Even brothers, Crosby and Bubbles, had started to fear him less, and like him more. John had slipped into Gale’s world and knocked it out of orbit, into a kinder, softer galaxy.
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Rosie’s holding a letter in his hand.
“Bucky home yet?” He asks carefully. “I ain’t seen him.”
All Gale can do is shake his head, dread building in his lungs. In his peripheral, Curt stands up.
“He okay?” Curt asks.
“Course he is,” Gale snaps, and then regrets it. He says, softer, “when you known him not to be okay?”
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The one where Deputy John Egan doesn’t come home for a few days, and Gale sets out to find him.
(Can be read as a sequel to Wild Things, or a standalone.)
Series
- Part 7 of nothing but blue skies