Archive of Our Own

We chase love in the shadows

Where you roam that's where I go

Dark rodeo, I'll take an oath to chase you down

Been here before now, honey

I jumped the gun kept running

This time Bonnie and Clyde

I do or die

Chapel by Adam Mac

They don’t make it to California. The Corolla blows a tire just outside of some nowhere town called Vaughn, New Mexico. John spends about two hours cursing at the thing like that might convince the thing to re-inflate. Gale sits inside the car and drapes a magazine over his face, waiting for John to come to terms with the fact they were going to have to hitch or walk their way to the nearest mechanic. 

They grab a couple of water bottles and their backpacks, walk along the road, and hope for another driver to stumble across them. Every once in a while John will catch their fingers together in a quick squeeze, offering Gale a crinkle-eyed smile. By the time they reach a gas station that could phone them a tow, they’re sweaty and sunburnt and neither of them for a single second consider robbing this saving grace of an establishment. 

He does see John eyeing the Skittles, though.

The tire is fucked, in need of a full replacement, and the cost of that along with the tow sets them back in gas money alone by hundreds. 

“I don’t feel comfortable hitting as many places nearby as we’d need to recoup,” John says quietly, scratching his sweaty curls and then replacing his Yankees cap backward. 

Gale looks around and shrugs. There’s nothing but desert on one side and a small town on the other, the sky turning navy and lights blooming fuzzy yellow and soft, “A few months in one place can’t hurt right?”

John squeezes his chin with a fond wink and goes to beg for a ride further into town from the mechanic. 

-*~*-

It’s easy to fall in with the punks and the weirdos; they frequent the same sort of spaces no matter what part of the country it is and John charms them a couple nights on the couch of a group around their age. It wasn’t quite a squat, but it had the air of a lease that was as solid as flypaper, with exposed subfloor and a kitchen that only half functioned and wildly painted drawings all over the walls.

It was loud, something that set Gale on edge after two years of Just John, but there was a cozy air to the place. Something like a home.

 Helen was heavily pregnant and shared the top floor with Ev and Nash, and both doted on her with equal measure. Nervous flighty Crosby and a drawling slip of a kid named Bubbles were as married as two men could be for a relationship that seemed entirely devoid of any sexual energy. They sprawled across each other and cuddled and held each other sleepily in the mornings while Harry threw back coffee until his fingers jittered but never once did they look at each other with any sort of heat.

It was entirely in contrast to Gale and John, who by the second day had slipped away to fuck in the shower with their fingers in one another’s mouths to keep the silence. It was quick and unsatisfying and awkward for their size but Gale refused to risk getting caught with their pants down in the living room. 

But it was nice if Gale were to admit, having hot water and being able to brush his teeth with John draped across his back like a heavy living blanket. 

-*~*-

There’s more wrong with the car, of course, there is . Gale knows there’s never a trip to the mechanics that ends with just there being only the initial problem present. But it’s a lot, and a little bit sobering and he watches John stand outside the gates to the tow shop and work through the problem in his head with hands on his hips.

“A winter in the same place might be nice,” Gale says, “I’m tired.”

They both were. Long hours in a seat weren’t easy on John’s still-healing torso, muscles easily sore and fatigued. And Gale slept more than he had for years, his body fighting to regain its strength after the illness. The constant driving had made him nauseous more than once and John had dutifully held his braid out of the way as Gale dry-heaved onto various sides of highways.

“Shoot, Buck, if you wanted to play house with me you just had to ask.” 

Gale looks around casually and then tugs John in for a kiss by his delicate chain necklace. 

-*~*-

They find work in a one room single-aisle flower-shop that burst with color and shape, the scent so heavy in the air it made Gale dizzy. But the shop was willing to take them both on, and there was a just-as-small apartment above the shop that they could rent as well. The owner was an old man who went by Chick; he was built like Gale’s dad and had the hard-cut look of ex-military. At first, Gale balks under his scrutiny, sure the older man would question why two full-grown men would be comfortable sharing a one-bedroom apartment, but Chick either is uncaring or hasn’t thought it through and merely tells them if they try stealing he’ll make them thoroughly regret it.

“Not the thievin’ type, sir,” Gale said because he had the more trustworthy face.

“Don’t bullshit me, kid, I’ve seen a million of your types. Just don’t rob me and I don’t give a shit what else you do so long as it’s not on my property or on my clock.” 

Beside Gale, dressed in a white shirt that stretches pleasantly across his biceps and a green work apron, John laughs quietly.

-*~*-

The apartment is cozy, if cramped was a rude word to use, with an around-the-back staircase access and a kitchenette that was little more than stove, a fridge and a single spot of counter space. The living room had enough for a futon and a coffee table and a TV if they arranged it right. But the bedroom had space enough for a queen bed and the bathroom had a tub and it’s more space than either of them have been used to living in for some time now. 

Ev and Bubbles show up with a few beaten-up pieces of furniture. Gale is taken aback but John treats it as natural as anything and Gale wonders how many temporary just-for-the-season friends he has across Middle America.

“Figure the next person who comes along might like em,” Bubbles says, pressing his hands on a sagging but comfortable enough couch to test the springs, “And if not we’ll keep an eye on the curb.” 

“What do we owe you?” Gale asks warily.

Ev shrugs his lanky shoulders, flips a cigarette between his lips, “Buy us dinner?” 

-*~*-

They fuck on just about every surface they can, and John reads them both a book of flower languages over and over until the pictures and names and uses echo in Gale’s dreams at night. Gale sells bouquets and John curses rose thorns and Gale learns that Petunias and Geraniums go well together.

Sometimes they get the itch and they fuck it out or slip a few things into their pockets when they hit up the local CVS or some other corporate sinkhole sucking the lifeblood of local businesses even out here in the forgotten desert. 

John plays the same Ramones cassette over and over until Gale can hum the lyrics of Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy with perfect imitation. His outlaw can’t sing a lick but Gale has only ever pretended to mind.

They’ll set the lights dim, towels thrown over mismatched lamps and John will talk around the room and smoke and Gale will lay in bed, in their bed, brushing through his hair with fingers that smell like crisp sap and hum when he needs to and lets himself marvel at how this felt a bit like something that could be forever. 

“I love you, John,” He’ll tell him sometimes, quiet and syrupy and John will pause his words, a smile breaking across his face in bread crinkles of affection. 

“And I love you Gale-” John pauses and then frowns, “The hell is your last name?”

He feels his lips curve into something blushing tender, “Cleven.”

The mattress groans, dipping begrudgingly on at the weight of another body.

John crawls his way up Gale’s body, the latter watching him with amusement until John is hovering above him, swaying slightly and still smiling, “Hi Gale Cleven, I’m John Egan and I love you.”

Gale’s throat is dry, he swallows a few times, and still when he speaks his voice sounds parched and reedy, “Nice to meet you, John Egan.”

It’s John’s twenty-third birthday and Gale finds him a beat-up cream and tan aviator jacket in an old Army Surplus. It’s more than a little bit stained and there’s a packet of toothpicks in the pocket that Gale finds and slots one between his lips out of curiosity, but John’s face lights up when he opens the clumsily wrapped gift. He wears it the entire night. Struts around, showing it off to Ev, Helen, and Nash who ooh and ahh over it to an appropriate degree.

He doesn’t take the jacket off for three days.

-*~*-

There’s no snow, which leaves them both feeling vaguely off-kilter. And it certainly doesn’t get cold like they’re used to, not by a long shot. But there’s lights, and Christmas cheer, and John insists on dragging one of the large shop cactuses upstairs to hang paper ornaments from. And Gale once again thinks they might be doing something like building a life together. 

They’ve got their car back and the two drive up to Santa Fe for Christmas to spend it eating Chinese food and window-shopping. On the way back they hit a Gas station as a gift to Gale and Gale fucks John in the back seat with fingers knotted in his hair to hold him down for his own present.

Gale buys him a fancy zippo, engraved with his initials. John buys him a notebook and an aviator jacket of his own, though it was sleeker and darker than John’s own atrocity. 

-*~*-

Gale turns twenty-one and they spend the night partying with their newfound friends. Helen was the only one who wasn’t drinking and Gale was happy to sit with her and sip seltzers together and watch Ev and John wrestle. John was built like a brick wall but Ev was slippery and surprisingly mean. They grapple and dance together and Gale wonders which of them would put an elbow or head through the drywall first. 

“It’s not awful here,” Helen was saying, “You could always stay.”

Gale sips his coke and shakes his head, hair loose for the occasion, “Nah, Bucky and I like movin’ around too much. Soon as the season changes we’ll be gone.”

Helen hums, ringed fingers tracing over her stomach.

“But,” he adds, realizing maybe that came off too ungrateful, “Can’t imagine we won’t come through here again.”

The slight woman smirks at him, “We’re thinking of going up to Seattle to visit family after the baby comes, maybe we’ll see you along the way.”

There’s no explanation if ‘we’ was a twosome or more, no mention of whose family it might be. Gale thinks maybe she does it a little on purpose. By the crinkle around her eyes, he thinks she knows his suspicions.

As predicted, John’s head goes through the wall like a fist through glass and comes away from it with nothing more than plaster and dust sprinkling his curls.  

They sit around the living room after. Gale on the couch and John sitting between his knees picking bits of drywall from his dark locks. John’s sipping a cheap plastic flute of champagne he’d produced from under his jacket upon their arrival and Gale steadies his wrist to take a small mouthful, wrinkling his nose at the sickly-sour taste and Crosby, who would have already been called a light-weight six drinks ago catches the grimace with drunken eyes.

“You don’t drink even a bit, huh Buck?” he slurs from Bubbles’ lap, awkward and long-limbed, work shirt unbuttoned to show an uncomfortable amount of hairy chest. 

“Not really,” Gale hedges, poking at a tender spot at John’s head until the other man grunts, pinching the back of Gale’s calf in retaliation, ‘You’re lucky y’got such a hard head, Bucky.” 

It was one of their things now, they were Gale and John to none but themselves. He thinks he should have realized off the bat that Chick knew what they were, willing as he was to pay them under the table.

“Never met a wall my head couldn’t beat,” John boasts with teasing smugness.

“This kid’s fuckin’ crazy,” Nash mutters to Everett, heads tilted just close enough together to be something.  

“If you try it you might like it,” Harry says, folding his body up into a standing position and leaning over the couch. A beer bottle shoves under Gale’s noise, sour-smelling and familiar.

“It’s good stuff,” the other man insists, earnest and kind and without a single bit of ill-intent. 

Gale’s closing his eyes, trying not to breathe through his mouth and holding himself very still, knowing Harry was as harmless as they came but it doesn’t matter so much because John’s standing, suddenly wearing the full size of his body with purpose. Fixes Crosby with a look that has the other man drawing back, face sheepish and a hand patting an apology onto Gale’s shoulder. 

“Ignore him,” Everett says, “It took us three weeks to convince him to try beer after he got disgustingly sick off of bathtub moonshine and now he wants to return the favor to anyone he can.” 

Harry shrugs his shoulders and stammers helplessly and Gale waves him off out of pity more than anything. 

It’s more of a birthday than he’s ever had and by the time John breaks into the whiskey, they’re all shouting over each other in a game of charades. Even Gale lets himself get drawn in, jumping to his feet and flinging an arm around John’s neck in celebration when they clinch a win against Helen and Nash.

-*~*-

They fuck in the bed, in their bed, John’s cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray on the nightstand and the bottle of Four Roses tucked up against Gale’s ribs. He’s got his legs thrown over John’s thighs and he can tell the cap is slightly unscrewed because the sharp scent of whiskey permeates the air every time one of their thrusts jostles the bottle. 

John’s hitting his prostate with bruising force, body slick and beautiful in the dim lamplight, his crucifix nestled between their chests and eyes blown wide with desire. Gale’s looking up at him and wishing he’d kiss him and John’s eyes flicker with the received message. Bends down with a hand on Gale’s chin and kisses the taste of liquor and cigarettes into Gale’s mouth.

It makes him feel like he’s flying . 

Like maybe he’s burning and he kisses back with vicious teeth, tongue seeking every drop of alcohol trapped by John’s tastebuds. 

John’s big hand slips off his jaw, presses Gale back down onto the mattress with a soothing brush of one big thumb against Gale’s pulsepoint and he arches into the point of contact. 

“Choke me,’” he orders, whiskey stinging his nostrils and wet against his ribs. 

Incredulity, vicious hunger, and desperate affection war on John’s face, flickering one after another and occasionally sharing space in a blend of conflict. Gale lets him look, sets his jaw and his brows low and digs a heel into John’s back as he bottoms out, forcing the slow grind of their bodies.

The other man groans, fingers tightening in reflex to the pleasure and when Gale makes a choked gasp of encouragement, an aborted “ Yes–!” John suddenly puts weight behind it. Tucks his fingers up under the hinge of Gale’s jaw and press his nose into Gale’s cheek as he rides the welcome opening of Gale’s body at a wild panting pace.

He can't breathe, or more accurately he struggles too, John’s big hand restricting every gasp and fingers pressing up against Gale’s artery until he spins out dizzily, lashes fluttering and body writhing. John gasps curses against his cheek that he barely hears over the rushing in his cheek, kisses him but all he can taste is whiskey and cigarettes and there’s liquor on his clothes again.

Fingers go lax around his throat, caressing rather than bruising and still Gale can’t force his lungs to move. He makes a helpless weak little noise.

“Breathe, Gale,” John croons.

Screwing his eyes shut, Gale lets John fuck the oxygen back into his body, gasping and shivering and limp with dizziness.

“Again,” he croaks when he can finally form words again. He’s exhaling soft little keens of pleasure with every thrust but his voice is steady.

John hisses, shocked and wild and all Gale can taste is whiskey. John’s hand tightens again, sends Gale spinning higher and wilder and his eyes keep rolling so he can’t look John in the eye but the other man bends to press their mouths together like he knows. It’s not much of a kiss, Gale’s body too interested in finding oxygen to commit to a full exchange of their lips. John seems to care exactly none, licking his way across the open wound of Gale’s mouth.

“Good fucking lord, Buck,” John gasps reverently, using his other hand to smooth the hair of Gale’s tear-stained face.

He hadn’t even realized he’d begun crying.

He’s being choked, he can’t help it.

Spots dance across his eyes when he comes, a vicious full-bodied reaction that drags on forever. Right at his peak John releases his grip around Gale’s neck and he shatters through another ceiling, soaring so far outside his body all he can feel is the ends of his fingers tingling. Everything else is numb and weightless, body shaking with bloss. When he comes back to his body John’s pressing soothing cool kisses against the throbbing skin of Gale’s neck. 

John’s come at some point, Gale can feel it oozing sticky and warm around the seal of the thick length inside him. He’s dragging soothing hands up and down Gale’s ribs, touch tender and worshipful. Gale rolls, pulling a pillow up to his face and breathing in the smell of John’s cheap cologne. 

Breathes in. Breathes out. 

“Can you get the whiskey out of the bed please,” He asks with careful calm.  

After a period of stillness where he feels John reach for him, to which he tenses his shoulders in silent response, John leaves with the bottle. Gale breathes and listens to the clink of the whiskey on the counter, the sound of John showering and the apartment being prepared for sleep. And breathes.

He hears the click of the lights, a dip in the mattress from John’s weight climbing in next to him. It’s normally Gale’s side but John voices no complaints. The dark is louder than their silence, pulsing worriedly between them.

“I don’t want to have sex with you when you’re drunk anymore,” Gale says. 

“Okay,” John answers, barely more than a whisper. 

John keeps to his side; they haven’t slept separately since they moved from a car to an apartment and Gale can stand it for only so long.

Rolling, throwing an arm across John’s thick waist he presses a kiss to the bare skin of John’s back, the chain of his crucifix tickling Gale’s lips. One of John’s hands comes down to caress a thumb over the back of Gale’s hand.

They fall asleep with their fingers tangled. 

-*~*-

John watches him all the next day. Stocking shelves, helping customers, battling it out with the roses that still pricked John every time. He watches him. Gale cuts bouquets and feels his eyes on the back of his neck, quiet and worried and assessing. 

He’s half sitting on a stool because standing for long periods still left him breathless eventually and after checking the front window for any approaching customers he sets down the moisture-beaded baby’s breath and swivels on the stool.

“Bucky.” 

He’s there like a called dog, Gale’s outlaw. Brow pulled together until a deep crevice was formed and mouth pinched with unhappiness. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking like he’s been holding the words in all morning and simply had been waiting for permission to utter the apology.

Gale shakes his head, smoothing out the worry in his brow with a pointer finger, and traces it down the proud line of his nose and across his lips where John presses a gentle kiss. Fingers come up, cradling Gale’s face tenderly and tilting his head to thumb at the purpling bruises he had tried to hide with an ugly orange turtleneck that washed him out terribly. 

“I didn’t mind that,” Gale says raspy and gentle, “I asked, I liked it.”

John hums, presses an achingly tender and lingering kiss to one of the marks. Gale can hear him exhale, feel the brush of air against his skin, “You know I’d never fuckin’ hurt you, Buck.” 

“I know,” Gale says softly, closing his eyes and relaxing in slow amounts into John’s touch. There was relief, dizzying and complete because he and John had never fought before. And this hadn’t even been that. A misunderstanding, an accidental finger in the eye of some beast crouching on Gale’s back. 

“I just can’t have our bed smelling like liquor.” 

“Never again,” John agrees quickly and easily. 

“The rest was okay though,” Gale says lightly. 

Stillness, then a quiet puff of a laugh, John pulling away to open his mouth some filthy comment sparking in his eye–

The bell for a customer entering rings.

-*~*-

Two weeks later John wraps tentative hands around Gale’s neck while they kiss on the floor leaning up against the bed. 

Gale presses forward, trust unwavering. 

Has to wear that god-awful turtleneck again. Helen winks at him.

-*~*-

They’re good boys, compared to times previous. John agrees to only gas stations closer to Albuquerque than not, and Gale keeps his shoplifting strictly to John’s lollipops and the cheap touristy pins Helen liked to stick on her tote bag. 

Nash goes with them once and makes himself so nervous that they have to pull over to let the kid vomit. John and Gale exchange looks over Nash’s heaving back and Gale decides to stay in the car as getaway driver so their pupil won’t be left on lookout by himself. 

“I’m really sorry,” Nash moans, “I just don’t wanna hurt anyone you know?”

“Nobody’s gonna get hurt,” Gale says, flicking a toothpick into his mouth and finishing the braid in his hair. 

“You don’t know that.”

Gale’s stomach lurches slightly.

 Nash is sitting unbeknownst in the spot John almost died. The blood long since faded to a vague barbecue sauce color. He doesn’t look over through sheer force of pride and will. 

“Bucky knows what he’s doing.”

-*~*-

Despite his earlier nervous stomach, Nash shouts along with them when they make their getaway, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear and John and Gale share another look through the mirror. John winks, blows him a kiss with his mouth. Gale squints at him but it’s a happy thing.

They leave Nash with a hundred dollars, a few electronics to pawn, and a promise of secrecy. 

He tells them he’s going to use the money to take Ev and Helen out to dinner and Gale kind of gives up on trying to figure them out at all. 

-*~*-

“Do you still want to go to California,” Gale asks, his head pillowed on John’s stomach. 

John’s smoking, grey film curling towards the high ceiling. His free hand is running through Gale’s unbound hair, stopping at any knots to gentle detangle them. It’s got Gale boneless and half asleep. 

“Yeah” John drawls, “Still sold on the idea of seeing you in a bikini Buck.”

Gale makes a face, holds his hand up and John lightly whips a rope of licorice into his palm, “I’m not doing that.”

John releases a put-out sigh, Gale’s head going almost upright then back down with the inhale and exhale. He loved it a little bit, the way John’s body was large and room-filling. He wasn’t much taller than Gale but every bit of him seemed to be twice as broad, twice as imposing. He was stronger, but never leaned on that aside from when he held Gale down in bed. And Gale knew if he so much as squirmed or tugged that strength would be tucked away again. John was a homegrown boy, raised on hard winters and long summers. The Midwest was his cradle, his hunting grounds and it seemed a bad omen to take him out of it. The both of them, really. 

“Do you want to go to California?”

Gale stares up at the smoke and tries to quell his unease.

“Sure, Bucky.”

-*~*-

They survive a flower store in February by the skin of their fucking teeth. John’s got thorn scratches all up his arms and even Gale’s been pricked enough times his hands are vaguely irritated and red. Glas has been cursed at, wept at, and begged more than he has in his entire life. They stare at each other in quiet daze while locking up.

 They’d run out of roses at noon.

He’d take robbing ten gas stations in a row over this, Gale is pretty sure.

-*~*-

He’s rinsing his hair out in the shower, door open to let the steam out because the ceiling fan no longer worked when hears a quiet exclamation come from the bedroom. He bites back a smile and reaches for the conditioner.

Knows when John enters the bathroom through sheer awareness.

“Didn’t realize you thought I was the flowers and chocolates kinda girl, Buck,” John drawls, leaning against the doorframe and holding up the packet of sweets and a bundle of poppies leftover from downstairs that Gale had left on his pillow.

“If you don’t like them I’m sure I can find someone else who will.”

John’s eyes glitter, a smile at the corners of his lips and something almost like a blush on his face. “Shove over, I’m coming in.”

He does. Clothes and all and Gale sighs at him until John presses a damp chocolate against his lips. 

-*~*-

They leave. This was always the plan but it’s a little more bittersweet because there’s something like roots here. 

But the job was only seasonal and John’s scar is nothing more than a divot Gale fits his finger over sometimes when they’re having sex and Gale is able to run without losing his breath and they’re not creatures made to stay in place.

They’re both itching, even as Gale hugs Helen extra tight and promises to email when he can and John’s pulling Harry and Bubbles into a hug in either arm and then Ev is kissing Nash’s temple and shaking both their hands as Helen tucks herself back into Nash’s embrace. 

“Be sure to stop by if you blow through again,” Ev says, patting Gale on the elbow and giving him a smile, “You’ve got friends here, long as you need ‘em.” 

“We’ll be back,” John promises, “Buck knows I tend to stick around.”

“Like a stone in your shoe, really,” Gale agrees.

John laughs at him but it sounds more like an ‘I love you.” 

They go, pulling away from the little flower store and John in the middle of trying to convince Helen to name the kid after him and they both watch the rearview mirror more than they ever have before. Which isn’t much, John’s fingers are tapping excitedly on the steering wheel and Gale’s got the window down to inhale the first warm breezes of spring and they’re ready to go even if it stings a bit.

But they do look back, and Gale thinks their new friends would appreciate that if they knew. 

-*~*-

Instead of heading west, they make their way back to Wisconsin for Mrs. Egan’s birthday.

Gale’s invited inside this time, into a home that’s several years in need of repairs but clean and smooth-running in a way he remembers from when he was very little and his mom was still enough to keep his father on a relatively straight path. He sits down for a dinner that’s full of bickering and voices and John oohing and aahing over the youngest of his sibling’s missing teeth. Watches them, something kicking gooey and silly in his stomach and suddenly wishes he smoked. 

They sleep in the living room and Gale pinches John’s side hard enough to deter the creeping hands that had been sliding into his sleeping bag.

John blows him the next morning on the way to the local diner for donuts and Gale leaves fingermarks in the headrest for minutes afterward.

They stay for a week and a half, the two of them making what repairs to the house that they knew how and could afford.

This time they both get a cheek kiss goodbye and Gale rubs John’s knee as they drive away.

-*~*-

“Stay still,” John grunts, tongue poked between his teeth in concentration.

“You’re not quite the dainty waif you might think you are,” Gale grunts right back, shifting again under the pin of the other man's hips. 

“Don’t be mean to the guy with a weapon,” John says, removing the ice from the numb peak of Gale’s nipple, “Definitely don’t call him fat.”

Gale scoffs, wincing slightly as he feels the sparky prick of a needle against his numb skin, “I never said that, I said you were heavy .”

“Mhm,” John agrees leaning forward a slow kiss to Gale’s forehead, “Ready?”

“You said you’ve done this before?” 

John gives him a slow, lazy grin, “Sure, Buck.” 

He slides the needle through Gales’ flesh, kissing the sharp exclamation from his lips and Gale bites him back until the pain subsides into a steady burning. 

They keep kissing as John slots in the bar and Gale moans as John swipes away the line of blood carving over his ribs. 

“Looks good, doll.” 

-*~*-

John looks at him as Gale winces his way through another bump in the road.

“It hurts,” he mutters, cheeks pink and biting his tongue against the throbbing coming from his chest. 

-*~*-

“I love you,” Gale pants against John’s lips as he rides him in the dark. They’re in Montana and Gale can see the stars from out the window. John’s barely more than a silhouette carved silver by moonlight, but his form is so familiar to Gale he could trace his body blind. 

John’s hands are tender on his hips, the wheel is digging into Gale’s back and he can hear the car springs squeaking with their movements. He smells like cigarettes and cologne and salty sweat and Gale buries his face in his neck, groaning. John’s kissing along his chest, tongue flicking at the sensitive bud of his pierced nipple. Gale keens for him.

“I love you – John–” 

John comes silent for the force of it, but when Gale tilts his ear towards his mouth he can feel John forming his name over and over in awe. 

-*~*-

Summer is peaking now and they decide that maybe they should get to California after all and make their wait down to Kansas City. They spend some time there working the casinos. John teaches Gale how to cheat at cards and poker and Gale hates it more than anything. He leaves the table fixing to John and spends his time learning how to pickpocket by careful observation.

He picks it up quickly and delights in plucking things from John’s pockets as often as possible, just to see how long it takes the other man to realize. 

On the hottest days, they rent a motel and lounge around like cats in front of whatever rickety fan or AC the accommodations provided. 

“We need to go to California,” John sighs.

Gale nods, pressing an ice cube to the back of his neck. 

-*~*-

Their gun gets stolen in Bellevue, Nebraska, along with a couple of John’s smokes and the scarf he’d gotten Gale. John had cussed out the air for a good thirty minutes while Gale sat on the curb feeling wretched because he’d been the one to suggest they stop for a motel room in the first place.

“I’m not mad at you,” John says before Gale can apologize, “Don’t give me that look y’get the worst puppy eyes I’ve ever seen whenever you’re upset n’ blaming yourself. I just don’t think we got the cash to shell out for a clean piece right now.”

“So what do we do then?”

John holds up his thumb and pointer finger, aiming it first at Gale’s head, and then tucks it into his pocket with a wink.

“Even if people suspect it’s fake, are they really gonna want to take that risk over a piddly old cash register?” 

-*~*-

It works every time.

That’s not what goes wrong.

-*~*-

“Fuck,” Gale says, then repeats it a second time for emphasis, dragging a hand through his hair and hissing when his fingers catch on the braid. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine we’ll just get the fuck out of this state without stopping again.” 

“We don’t have enough gas for that,” Gale shakes his head, “The camera saw your face, it got my profile at least . And they think you have a fuckin’ weapon. If they don’t have the descriptions out already they will .” 

“We drive,” John says firmly, “We drive and–”

“We split up.” 

John nearly slams on the brakes, “ Fuck that are you kidding me?” 

“You’re the size of a house, John. The car is bright red, how many men in Nevada have long blonde hair?”

“You’d probably be surprised–” John mutters.

“Splitting up is smart, you know I’m right.” Gale gestures sharply. 

He watches John inhale slowly, close his eyes and turn back to the road, and then exhale with sharp precision. 

“We ditch the car,” John says, “She’s not making it more than a few thousand miles anyway, Chick told me.”

“Meet in California,” Gale continues. His heart is beating out of his chest, he feels vaguely nauseous. 

He should have checked better, but the camera had been hidden, tucked smartly up behind a rafter and angled just right to capture enough evidence of them to be damning. He should have checked better. 

It’s fucking Cozad, Nebraska. Who was supposed to care that much about a single gas station?

“San Francisco,” John says, “There’s an old church there I camped at once. We meet there and wait for the heat to die down. Then maybe up to Oregon. Portland. Celebrate at some grunge show.” 

Gale can tell John hates it just as much as he does, by the rhythm of his words. Quick and sharp to hide the hurt, cold logic blocking the frustration. It echoes through Gale’s own body as he writes down the address in a palm journal he kept in his backpack. 

“It’s a plan,” Gale says, tight with firm determination.

-*~*-

John drops Gale off at a Greyhound station, tucks more than half of their stash of bills into an envelope for him and yanks him around the side of the building to kiss him in the shadows until they’re both panting. 

“I love you,” John says, voice rumbling and wounded, “I fucking love you Buck, didn’t mean to get you to meet me at a chapel like this but I’ll take what I can get.” 

Gale laughs, cradles John’s head in his arms and tries not to feel like somewhere in his chest he is crying out in agony and slowly dying. 

They buy one ticket together, John’s shoulder brushing Gale’s as he folds out the cash, brow furrowed as if this last act of service was particularly important. Watches the buses pull up, clunking and tired and wheezing out exhaust as if they too felt the grief of impending separation.

John pulls him into one last embrace.

And now that the hour has come, and despite it being Gale’s idea, he’s struck with a sudden terror; unable to move. His fingers knot in John’s back, stitches popping as the breath stalls in his chest. 

“Go on, Buck,” John’s lips press to his forehead, “Get out of here.” 

Gales Outlaw stands by the now empty bus station, one hand raised in the air until he can no longer see him out the back window. 

-*~*-

He stops somewhere in Colorado and stares back along the horizon as if John might ride up in the Corolla, grinning and easy and relaxed. He doesn’t, Gale knows he’s heading down to the coast to come in through New Mexico, but it’s enough of a dream to get him back on the bus when the call comes.

The ticket only gets him halfway there and he spends a couple nights in Vegas at a by-the-hour room motel and sleeping above the covers. Nobody’s quiet and nobody’s trying to sleep but him and he’s too unused to sleeping alone to get much rest. 

He’s beginning to think maybe making a home a person instead of a place had been the more dangerous option.

-*~*-

The second bus is more crowded, noisier and cramped and so starkly without John it makes Gale dizzy. He hasn’t spoken besides ‘scrambled egg and toast with black coffee, please.’ and ‘thank you.’ in a week and a half.

He’s limping to California, ducking low in his seat whenever a cop drives by and watching news reports in bus terminals with affected disinterest. 

Nothing. No story about them, no mention of John. 

-*~*-

California is hot and dry and colorful in a way that’s a little dirty if one knew where to look. There were the neat rows of houses on the rolling hills of San Francisco, frilled and laced and painted an array of colors. There were the parks and the boardwalks, crawling with tourists and families. And then there were the red light districts and the gentlemen’s clubs and the queer bars that spilled out sweat and cologne and bacchanalian delight into a night sky thick with smog. 

Gale finds the little chapel, tired and crumbling with a sad soft air like tired widow. He feels a bit bad for the property, left lonely and without song and spends a couple nights sleeping under her rafters until he’s awoken by the front door jiggling and the sound of someone trying to get in. It’s likely just another squatter, but Gale isn’t trusting by nature; especially with the amount of cash he has on him as he does. 

He gets a motel after that.

-*~*-

By the first week he starts to get uneasy. He buys a radio and climbs on top of fast food joints for the six o’clock news listening for any mention of a John Egan.

He’s blowing through his money renting these motels and he intersperses it with sleeping on benches, arms flooded protectively across his chest and looped through his backpack straps. 

By the second week the unease turns to full-blown worry. 

The third week it’s somewhere closer to anger. 

When a month has passed Gale, practical despite anything childish in him screaming otherwise, accepts the inevitable conclusion.

John wasn’t coming. 

-*~*-

Part of him, large and desperate and needy, tells him to put down roots and stick around, just in case John was just late. A smaller, darker and far more sly part of him whispers that maybe John was fine and had just felt the call of the road. Maybe he left you , it whispers. 

Gale gives it another week. He has to, because he loves John, and John had said he felt the same.

He counts his last two hundred dollars, tucks it down safe, and then shoulders the backpack and starts walking. Walks to the outskirts of a city where the cops care less about him walking along the street with his thumb out. It’s getting to be dusk and it’s fully night by the time he slips into a quieter, slicker part of the city. Red lights and peepshow magazine stores with bathrooms that were rentable. Parents didn’t bring their children to the parks here, especially not in the evening. 

A yellow Ford stops and the guy seems harmless enough, the kind of tired salaryman eager to get home to his wife’s roast and seemed harmless enough. He promises to take Gale as far as Sacramento and sets to idly chatting about the price of gas.

Nameless meaningless pop music plays on the radio, nothing Gale knows.

-*~*-

Gale brushes his teeth with shaking fingers. Scrubs his tongue, drags the bristles across every molar and spits into the rest stop sink. Spits again and rakes over his tongue again with the last of the toothpaste on the brush.

He’s twelve miles outside Sacramento city limits, and the sky is cloudy and grim above him. 

There’s a river running nearby, Gale can hear it’s rustle and taste the moisture on his tongue. A blocked off dirt access road trails behind the rest stop and Gale waits for the coast to be empty before hopping over the chain. 

Down the road a ways he finds the river, slow enough to bathe in but the sides of the bank too steep to risk trying. The road itself leads to a concrete bridge, with enough of a gap underneath to provide a healthy shelter. They’d laid out a concrete slab for support and the pale stone is covered with so much overlapping graffiti Gale can hardly make out a single clear image. Signs of other travelers, marks from tents and leftover fires, dot the underpass. But they all seemed at least a few days old. For now Gale was alone.

He sits, knees to his chest and back against the concrete pillar, hands pressed to his eye sockets and tries to think.

Portland was their last agreed spot, Gale supposes there was a chance that John had had to avoid California altogether, if the cops were close enough to be a problem. Theoretically, he could have skipped San Francisco and headed up to Portland hoping to catch Gale there or along the way. If he was coming at all, that was the place to go.

Gale circles his eyes again, exhales through his nose and ignores that voice again. You lost his gun and maybe he’s figured you more trouble than you’re worth. What if he left you?

“Hey man, you okay?” 

His boot skitters on the ground as he shoves himself to standing, hands flying to his pockets like he might have a weapon there. 

Two boys peer down at him from the top of the ravine, one’s mouth pinched with disdain and the other with concern. They were both travel-clean and dressed in similar dark-clothes-dark-bandanas around their necks. Both tall, similar to age as Gale if not a touch older, and seemingly companions.

Gale’s stomach does a sudden kick that he chooses to blame on hunger. He’d had nothing to eat since gas station trail mix that afternoon.

“You alright?”

The shorter one, the broader one, speaks. He’s got wild dark hair curling out from under a skullcap and he’s got one bracing hand on the other boy, bony and hawkish, who was peering down the precarious slope.

“M’fine,” Gale mutters, keeping one hand in his pocket around his imaginary knife. 

The traveler's eyes glitter unreadably, “Mind if we camp here?”

-*~*-

Johnny and Benny are from out East, they won't say where but some of Johnny’s words shape the same as Curts and Benny says ‘now’ with a distinct Pennsylvanian muffle to it. Gale doesn’t ask their ages, doesn’t ask much really because he’s less than interested in them returning the favor, but they’ve got supplies for a fire and Johnny has a nice voice when Benny prompts him to sing. 

Grateful Dead’s Not Fade Away , Jerry Garcia’s Deal, and even Cat Stevens. It’s a quieter, more classic affair than what Gale’s used to John hunting down on the radio or in cassette bins in countless record stores, but Johnny sings it well.

They’re train hoppers, traveling vagabonds come up on the Union Pacific from Ogden, riding the freight lines across the country and back with the seasons. Dirty and suntanned except their lower faces and Benny’s got a homemade patch Don’t Feed The Bulls sewn onto one side of his skullcap that’s clearly held in place by dental floss. Johnny wore a heavy chain around his neck, a heavier one at his hip with a padlock clinking from it ominously, and had a sharp mouth but soft eyes. 

“We’re headed to Portland to get on the High Line,” Benny says, one hand tucked lazily around Johnny’s hip, “you’re welcome to join us.”

“I’ve never hopped a train,” Gale admits as if that were something to feel shame for.

Johnny’s frowning at him, but Gale is pretty sure that’s how the man’s face was built, “It’s easy, either you get on the car or you go under the wheels. Motivating as hell in the moment.”

“We’ll show you,” Benny adds, “It’s safer than hitching by a mile.”

-*~*-

Gale gets his own bandana, a soft blue that’s quickly turned sun-worn and pale, to protect against the soot and diesel fumes. He learns how find the right carts and how to tuck himself down into the well at either end of a car to avoid being spotted or hide from the sun. He steals himself heavy gloves so the metal and flaking paint doesn't skin his palms when he catches a train on the fly.

He watches the stars pass above him, tucked under a sweatshirt and shaking with the weight of the train. They’re too fast for him to tell the constellations, flickers of light like glitter broken up by the rapid sweep of trees. 

“A hundred and seventy-five miles an hour,” Johnny says quietly beside him, though with the noise it’s more of a speaking voice. His fingers are tapping, no more than shadow in the night, once and then a burst of seven and then again of five. 

“That’s fast,” Gale answers, placing a toothpick into his mouth.

“It’ll kill you if you fall. So be careful if you gotta take a midnight piss.” 

It’s not that Johnny was nice. But he wasn’t mean.

-*~*-

They hop off in Dunsmuir, California. It’s a tiny travelers sort of town, the sort of place John and he would have stopped for gas and nothing more, unwilling to risk too quick a response from local police. It’s a dead end place, with empty streets and a downtown that was mostly shuttered storefronts. But they’re able to find a diner that doesn’t seem inclined to turn them away and had available bathrooms. 

Benny orders them each an omelet and hashbrowns because Gale doesn’t really care so long as it’s hot and fresh-made. 

Gale doesn’t really trust them, not yet, not after a mere twenty-four hours. But they’re calm and quiet, mostly. Johnny was jittery and didn’t seem to hold any interest in eating, sipping from a sealed water bottle that Benny presses into his hands, while Benny rarely seemed to experience any emotion more volatile than mild irritation. From what Gale had gathered they kept mostly to themselves because that was the company they liked best. 

It was a sentiment Gale had mistrusted at first, this kindness amongst vagabonds. Not that there was never reason to be cautious, but Gale had been invited to sit beside more fires and share supper with more strangers and receive more no-strings-attached help than he’d ever experienced while in Wyoming. Two years and he understood it now, enjoyed it even. 

But they weren’t Bucky. 

“We’ll camp here tonight,” Johnny says, screwing the cap on his water, checking the tightness three times before shoving it into his backpack, “There’s a freight headed to Eugene coming at six tomorrow morning. We can grab it on a crew change.”

“Unless you’re over the trains, of course,” Benny says with a quiet tilt to his mouth. 

Gale leans back against the cracked vinyl of their booth. His hair was grey with dirt and grime, and the tight pull of sunburnt skin throbbed over every inch of exposed skin. His whole body is sore and wobbly from the constant bump of the train. 

He thinks of the stars and the rivers and the mountains he’d seen. Inaccessible by car or by foot, traveling paths ridden by the free people of the country for a centennial. 

He flips his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. He misses the smell of cigarettes and whiskey more than he ever thought he could. 

“Hell, still trying to get to Portland aren’t I?”

-*~*-

Gale watches Benny counting out the money at the edge of the gas station property, muttering to himself in irritation. 

“What do you need?” 

“Ah,” Benny says, drops a quarter, and bends to get it, “Johnny needs sealed food, and plastic baggies. The –like – sandwich ones you know?” 

“Yeah,” Gale says, tugging his braid over his shoulder, “Just stay here.” 

It feels good, to be useful, to have something he can do to help instead of relying on these two for his survival. Instead of relying on John’s direction. He’s doing it the way he’s learned best, aimless wandering but without too much boredom. Somewhere to be but not rushing. Buy a little bit, pocket only a little more. 

The baggies Benny asked for, a few cans of soup, a can of beans and some slim jims. 

A packet of sour Skittles, hesitated over for less than a second. 

The taste had grown on him, kissed into his mouth so many times he began to associate John’s tongue with a sour sting. 

He buys a couple bags of chips and a cheap convenience store coffee with quarters and saunters back to the two travelers. Johnny looks pointedly unimpressed but Benny gives him a grateful smile. Divides their spoils between their three bags and claps Gale on the back.

Later, bedded down for the night in a hidden campsite, Gale is made observer to a bizarre ritual spanning over hours. 

Tucked into a boxcar, a lucky find Gale’s beginning to learn, he watches Johnny methodically pull out every article of food, check it over with careful precise fingers and sharp eyes, and then cautiously divy up anything possible into baggies. Each one slowly sealed and turned back and forth for one last inspection. The practice is then repeated with any old food; baggies checked and then placed in new ones.

Then the cans, labels carefully peeled off and scribbled in sharpie their contents, traced with searching fingers and pressed on all sides as if to check for a compromised structure.

 Benny isn’t concerned in any visible way, so Gale is mostly sure this is a regular occurrence. 

“What’s for lunch, Jack?” Benny asks, crouched by a portable burner. 

Johnny holds up a can, inspecting it once again, finger tapping an equal number of times. Benny taps back when he takes the can, winking. Johnny smiles at him faintly and then gives Gale a considering look. 

He looks back, expression carefully calm. 

“I’m checking to make sure they haven’t been tampered with,” Johnny explains after a moment. There’s a pull to his face that makes Gale think that the other man knows the statement is far-fetched. And that he also wholeheartedly believes it.

Gale pauses for a moment.

“That’s smart.”

Benny gives him a quiet nod from behind Johnny.

-*~*-

They don’t travel every day by the trains. Sometimes they stop for days or weeks at one spot, resting sore bodies, lining their pockets with quick labor jobs, or sampling the local views. Both Benny and Johnny turn out to be avid hikers and Gale learns to love the ache and blisters.

-*~*-

Sometimes he dreams of John. Dreams he’s woken up under his arm in the backseat of the Corolla or in the passenger's seat as John rolls the window down to feel the wind on their faces. Dreams of him bleeding under his hands and kissing in the shadows of a Greyhound bus station.

He dreams of the smooth sweaty glide of his hand down John’s back, grasping at a hip and then the top of a thigh, pulling the slick heat of his body around Gale again. John’s dark curls dropping between his shoulders, the slow shivering gasp he always let out when Gale was hitting the perfect rhythm. Dreams of how he’d melt under the teeth and tongue of Gale’s mouth, grin at him even when he was being fucked until his eyes rolled back and the wet seal of his mouth around Gale’s cock. 

Dark blue eyes glittering up at him, nestled in blonde curls and pricking with tears from the stretch of his throat. 

He’ll wake, shivering and aroused and feeling a bit like he’s being ripped in half the moment he remembers it’s the wrong John breathing nearby. 

-*~*-

Johnny was the singer with a seeming preference for the trifecta of Nelson, Cash, and Van Morrison. Sometimes Gale asks him to sing Ramones and closes his eyes trying to remember the winter.

But a few days into their travel Benny had pulled out an older but nice enough looking camera, balancing it on his knees as he took photos of the passing landscape. They stop at every CVS they can to get the photos developed, pooling their nickels and pennies to see what the lens had recorded. 

Gale ends up with a stack in his backpack. Mountains and canons and rivers running right beneath the tracks under their feet. Pictures of the moon over a firefly-lit field they’d camped in one night and pictures of him washing his hair in a stream with a disgruntled expression or leaning out the doors of a boxcar to take in the view. Him and Johnny locked in heated – at least on Johnny’s end – debate over on the Man in Black versus Marley. 

A few from when Johnny had stolen the camera and Benny, who turned out to hate being photographed, did his best to avoid a direct shot.

“I never know when to smile!”

-*~*-

He’s writing letters in his notebook, stupid girlish things about memories with John and romantic platitudes. Sometimes they’re angry letters, how he should have known this was the inevitable outcome to a man who had flirted with him first with a gun in his hand. He addresses them in accordance to his feelings; Dear John, we saw a herd of wild mustangs today, you would have lost your goddam mind.

Hey Asshole, Remember when you told me you’d meet me at a church like you meant it? Where the fuck were you?

Bucky, I really thought it was just going to be me and you and the open road forever. 

Hon, I feel more like myself than I ever have, and yet it still feels like only half of what I would be with you on this train beside me. You’d love all this, you really would.

Sometimes there was no address, just snippets of songs.

  And then she spoke, Aren't you someone I used to know, And weren't we lovers a long time ago?

-*~*-

In Eugene, Oregon they disembark early due to a crew change, ending up hiking along the tracks for several miles. It’s Gale who spots the blackberries first, pointing them out to a delighted Benny who tells them all to start filling whatever hats they have with the ripe fruit. They gorge themselves until they’re all faintly sick and their fingers are stained purple.

He coaxes Johnny even, reasoning they were wild grown and therefore untouched by anyone but the three of them. 

They have to hike across town and cross an active highway to catch their next string. The mad dash across a dark road between packs of blurry fast cars sets Gale’s heart pounding somewhere between his mouth and ears. He laughs, throws himself over the walls, and lands right on top of a breathlessly giggling Johnny.

-*~*-

He wakes from another dream of John, tucked in another jungle outside of Albany. Oregon was lush in a way Gale isn’t used to and it takes him a moment to separate the gentle rustle of green leaves from the soft sounds coming from across the smoldering fire. At first it’s just whispered conversation, Johnny’s quicker tone and Benny’s easy response, quiet enough to have Gale shrugging himself back into sleep. 

Benny says something else, Gale hears the quiet wet sound of kissing. Then a weak noise, quickly bitten off, that’s unmistakably Johnny. 

“Easy, Jack,” Benny says softly and barely there, then the sound of lips against skin again.

Gale listens to their quiet rhythms, ragged and then slower with the faint shuffle of clothing. Johnny’s breathing suddenly growing deep and nasal, Benny’s sharp exhale. 

Benny whispering, “Lick it clean,” and then silence again.

There’s a lump in Gale’s throat, a burning at the back of his nose and coming from his tightly squeezed eyelids. 

Mostly, he’s been trying to avoid thinking about John in any significant capacity. The plan was Portland and the goal is to get to Portland and that’s all he will let himself focus on for now. But he misses John with an ache that taps on his shoulder now and then like an insistent child or like waiting with his knees to his chest in front hall for his mother to come home from chemo. Quiet and sad and always watching . Misses the way John snored but only when they were in a bed and the way he never got his lighter going on the first snick and how he sounded singing along to the Ramones in their apartment above the flower shop.

His arms are folded across his chest for warmth, tucked alone as he was in his sleeping bag. He digs his fingers into his ribs and rolls onto his stomach.

-*~*-

“We’re hitching to Portland,” Johnny explains the next morning, face slack and calm. Benny had a fading mark just peeking above his collar. 

“The bulls in the next yard are thorough as fuck,” He adds, zipping his backpack, “And the yard-workers aren’t any better. They threw Benny and I in jail overnight a few years ago.”

“Was shit,” Benny adds, “They didn’t have room service.” 

Johnny snorts and Gale offers a weak smile, “We’ll be able to find someone wanting to take all three of us?”

Benny shrugs, “There’s always someone.” 

That someone turns out to be some small-timer band in a shitty limping-along painted van headed up that way to make their fortune. Gale sits squashed between a drumset and a kid who only went by the name Rosie with painted nails and a mustache to rival John’s. 

Benny twists round in the backseat to snap a photo of the two, Gale flicking a toothpick between his teeth and Rosie’s curly head flopped onto his shoulder in sleep. 

Johnny’s in the front seat, squashed between a sweet-faced kid named Alex and arguing with the driver Crank about whether Anit-Flag had sold out or not. It lasts for the solid first hour of the trip. 

-*~*-

Gale sits on a hill overlooking the train yard and realizes what a stupid fancy Portland had been. A city of one point three million people, as Johnny had told him, tapping the numbers out on the bony curve of his sternum while they rode. One point three million and not a single hint of where Gale might start looking for John. 

There were tasks half as difficult as this that were already impossible. 

He rests his clasped elbows on his knees, one jiggling rapidly as he watches the last of his hope vanish into the city smog. Hadn’t even realized he’d been clinging to it, tucked up against his heart like a sodden kitten. He’s got the snowglobe in one hand, turning it left and right to watch the slow swirl of the stars. They glitter brilliantly in the sun, flashing solver and yellow and the occasional blue sky. 

Splintering the toothpick between his teeth he tosses it as far as the basalt will go. Considers following with the snow globe but his fingers tighten unconsciously before the thought even comes to an end. 

Johnny and Benny are up by the highway, trading smokes with the band and chatting quietly. 

Gale flops onto his back, stares up at the blue blue sky through squinted lids, and imagines what it could be like up there. 

Cold, most certainly. The kind that froze the moisture in his eyes and iced his skin. Unsurvivable cold. And clouds wet as the heaviest of downpours, higher than any building could ever hope to be. Gale could almost taste it if he closed his eyes, the ice of clean cold air and burning ozone. 

Crunching gravel has Gale opening his eyes just as the sun is shadowed out. He looks up at Benny’s somber face. 

“Yeah?” He grunts, tossing an arm over his eyes to hide the humiliating burn there. 

More rough drag of rubber soles over rocks as Benny drops down onto his launches, voice suddenly closer.

“Look,” He says, quiet enough to not carry over to the rest of the milling travelers, “I don’t know what went down with your last travel partner, you haven’t said anything and I won’t ask what you’re not offering, but you’ve got ‘broken heart’ stamped all over you and Jack’s gotten attached.” 

Gale screws his face up, pinching his lips together as if he could deny that’s exactly the beast that’s been crouching on his shoulders. It felt like giving it too much power to acknowledge what was there. Because then came the second inevitable recognition of what was gone . Large and booming and Egan-shaped. 

“He and I are gonna stick around here with these guys for a week or two,” Benny continues,  “Stage crew their gigs and earn a little cash. There’s a spot for you if you want it.”

Dropping his arm back down to his side, Gale squints one eye up at him.

Benny scratches the back of his head, “Losing Jack is my worst nightmare. And nobody should be goin’ it alone so if you want to ride the High Line with us, we thought we’d offer.” 

He has to swallow a couple of times, clear his throat and sit up to reach for a water bottle, “That’s kind of you Benny.” 

“Everyone should see it once,” Benny shrugs, “It’s the prettiest ride in North America.”

-*~*-

They spend two weeks and three days in Portland, carrying drum sets and guitar cases and amps to every sticky one-room dive bar in the city. They set up sound systems under the careful eye of Alex and Gale teaches him how to pick pockets in turn. Rosie is the most frequent victim of the bassist's newfound sticky fingers and it’s not an infrequent occurrence to hear him begging Alex for his lucky lighter back.

Cranks a good guy. East Coast as they come but Gale’s trying not to hold it against him, especially since he was graciously allowing them to crash in the already cramped van. 

And, really, the band isn’t bad. Not the next Nirvana but might go somewhere if they played their cards right. 

They work other odd jobs, as sometimes all Rosie and the others can offer in payment is a dry place to sleep and a meal. So Gale spends a couple of weeks helping out at a record store run by an old dyke called Baby and her partner Alice. He picks up a taste for Jim Croce and while he lifts the walkman the cassette for You Don’t Mess With Jim is an honest purchase. 

Johnny and Benny drop acid one night, disappearing into the van, and Gale sits with Rosie and Crank who trade a cigarette back and forth and giggle like children everything the wheels squeak.

“Do you think they realize we’re still all out here by the fire? Should we tell them?” Rosie gasps into his hand. In the low light, face creased by mirth he makes out so similar an image to John that Gale finds his gaze lingering for just a moment with consideration. 

“Naw,” Gale drawls eventually, placing a toothpick between his lips and drawing his braid over a shoulder to brush fingers through it, “Let the lovebirds have their fun.”

-*~*-

Rosie and his crew are headed up to Seattle and they leave with Gale and the others a handful of handmade band shirts and a few cassettes. Benny promises to keep an ear out for them on the radio and then they’re ducking back under the railing of the train yard, whispering quiet well wishes as they creep down to their ride to Spokane. 

There’s a heavy presence of both security and workers here and Gale spends several heart-pounding minutes creeping up into a piggyback and crouching under the massive shipping container while voices ambled by. 

But they’re out by dawn and Gale stares out at the lightening sky and exhales slowly. 

It’s been months since anyone’s called him Buck.

-*~*-

Lush Pacific Northwest rainforest gives way to scrubland and farm-dotted hills as they speed towards Spokane. At one crew change they’re forced to disembark to avoid detection and crouch shivering in a patch of tall grass until the flashlights vanish. It works out alright, in the end, as they’re able to hop into an open boxcar and get out of the wind that had begun to chill. But it takes a while for Gale’s fingers to warm back up. 

They make dinner by hotplate, or at least Benny and Gale do. For whatever reason the sudden disembarkation and stealth had agitated Johnny. He’s extra meticulous in his inspection of his and Benny’s stores, and it’s almost midnight by the time he’s completed his rituals. 

Gale’s snacking on a pack of Twizzlers he’d swiped before they’d left and scribbling in his notebook and Benny’s stirring the chosen can of soup while Johnny puts the rest of the food away. He’s just considering setting up for bed when Johnny straightens abruptly, setting the backpack down.

“Benny,” he says, voice odd. 

Head snapping up at his name, Benny drops the spoon into the tin.

“Now?” He asks, shoving back and away from the fire. 

“Uh huh,” Johnny says, voice still sounding off. “Soon,” He corrects himself.

Gale’s paused, halfway sat up on an elbow and watching as Johnny calmly walks over and folds himself down until his head is resting on Benny’s lap. Benny lets him go himself, though his hand hovers around Johnny’s reclining form as if he might lose his balance at any second.

“You got a watch?” Benny asks Gale, “Mine’s broken.”

Johnny makes a quiet noise then, head drooping forward and then snapping up straight. Gale sits up fully then stops as the other man goes fully stiff, eyes tracking rapidly beneath heavy lids. He watches as Benny talks to Johnny quietly in a low voice, thumb soothing against his temple. When his limbs start to shake Benny holds him gently against the cradle of his body and continues his murmuring.

Gale stares, holding his breath and then fumbling for his watch, angling it to catch the stove light.

 Benny wipes a line of saliva from Johnny's chin with a thumb.

 “It’s okay,” He reassures, “He’ll be alright.” 

Gale watches Benny stroke the hair off of Johnny’s forehead, eyes fixed at some unknown point past them all, and realizes that for these few minutes every now and then, Benny knew exactly how he was feeling.

They sit as Johnny’s body continues its misfires, breathing rapid and distressed. The metal floor booms now and then as his limbs strike it oddly.

“Tell me if it’s getting close to five.”

Gale glances down at his wrist, “Two and a half minutes.” 

-*~*-

Johnny’s seizure ends after three minutes and eighteen seconds but it’s further long minutes before he seems coherent and able to sit up enough. He sleeps much of the rest of the twenty-seven hour ride to Spokane and Gale and Benny trade off turns sitting beside him and watching him for any signs of a repeat seizure. 

“It’s only a couple times a year,” Johnny explains during one wakeful moment, face thin and drawn as he sips at a water bottle and suspiciously mouths at some crackers, “Some people have it worse.” 

He can see the other man’s discomfort, the awkwardness of sudden exposed vulnerability.

“Does it hurt?”

Dragging up one worn and patched pant leg, Johnny shows off his rapidly purpling knee and leg, “Not usually, just from knocking myself against shit.”

“Do you ever worry about what if it happens at the wrong time out here?”

Johnny shrugs, “As opposed to the wrong time while living in the same spot?”

Beyond them, Benny looks briefly haunted.

-*~*-

It’s cold at night, enough to get Gale shivering in his sleeping bag on the nights they're on train. The metal floor soaks up every drop of cold from the air and leeches it right into Gale’s body, even with John’s old Badger’s hoodie thrown over his own dark zip-up. 

Their bodies rock with the clatter of the train tracks, somewhere between Washington and Montana, and now that it no longer made Gale vaguely seasick he finds the motion soothing. 

It doesn’t stop his teeth from chattering. He can hear the low slur of voices and Gale bites his tongue, dragging his eyes up to the cloudy dark sky, please not tonight . 

Benny’s head – Gale can tell by the tight skullcap – pops up.

“We can hear you shivering from all the way over here.”

“Sorry.”

“Johnny said-”

“I did not. ”

“ – said there’s room at his side if you want it.” 

Gale works his jaw, and clenches his teeth as another shiver vibrates through him. 

“Don’t worry,” Johnny drawls, “You’re not really my type.” 

Metal scratches on plastic as he shuffles across the well, hesitates for a moment, and then settles himself right against the warm line of Johnny’s body. The heavy weight of a blanket falls over him and he feels the slow heartbeat of the other man between his shoulder blades. It’s nothing like laying with John, who was broader and heavier by far. But it’s a comfort, the feeling of another drowsy body so close.

He’s still shivering, just faintly, and after a moment's hesitation, Johnny drapes a careful arm over Gale’s waist. 

“Night, Gale,” Benny says over the sway of the train.

-*~*-

They bathe in a slow-moving river, jump in with their clothes on to get the weeks of grime off and then strip bare to scrub their bodies. Gale’s leaner than he’s ever been, arms strong from hauling himself on and off of moving trains and skin tanned from hours under the unforgiving sun. 

Benny shaves, which Johnny watches with an expression close to pouting as he fishes through a bag of trail mix for the M&M’s. 

Gale’s grown his own facial hair, he realizes as he peers at his reflection in the water. The stubble is sunbleached but it isn’t as patchy as he’d expect. 

“Keep it–” Benny calls.

“Someone has to,” Johnny mutters.

“ –Makes you look like Ethan Hawke.”

-*~*-

There’s a brush fire on the way to Troy, Montana, turning everything sweet-smelling and hazy. The sky and the sun are both raging shades of orange as it slips over the smokey tree-line and all three of them pour water over their bandana masks and sit low down in the well of the cart as security trucks drive up and down the line. 

At one point the smoke is so thick that his companions sat across from him are hazy at the edges. 

Benny gives him a reassuring nod, arm slung around Johnny’s shoulders and tapping soothingly against his sternum. 

Gale thinks he’s going to always miss John, just a little bit.

-*~*-

Gale finishes his notebook in Libby, Montana, over half a year since he first started it. The spine is thoroughly broken, the pages bulging and fat with writing and pressed flowers and photos from Benny taped to different entries. 

It’s a lot of good, a large amount of bad, and more than a few things omitted. He folds it in his hands and wonders if he should just toss it, let the whole thing go along with the snowglobe, still wrapped in a sock with the scrawled note wrapped around the thinner joining of the ball to base.

To my little Buck Armstrong, don’t forget about the rest of us when you’re out exploring the cosmos.

Fanning through the pages, a slip of paper bright pink and catches his eye and he stops on a page before he’d really begun writing his thoughts down, filled with doodles from John and a recipe from Helen he’d wanted to try out.

The pink b-side of a receipt, stamped with the logo for a New Mexico pizza place was scribbled over in John’s surprisingly neat handwriting. Laying out the phone and address for Curt and Kenny’s place because John had asked Gale to mail their Christmas gift for him. Shoved between the pages and quickly forgotten once the task was over. Gale’s fingers tremble as he picks it up, turning it over to find the second note from John on the back.

One L. Pepperoni….8.99

Don’t forget! Love you Doll :)

Gale exhales sharp and loud, a punched-out gasp as this lifeline suddenly reveals itself to him. Johnny and Benny, pressed hip to thigh to knee to ankle and passing a cigarette back and forth between them look up simultaneously. Johnny’s frowning like he’s already ready to bite and Benny’s brow is furrowed curiously. 

“Do either of you have a quarter?” 

-*~*-

His fingers shake as he dials. Slipping sweaty against the worn buttons of the phone booth and he’s left a soot-stained thumbprint on one corner of the receipt. Hooks one leg behind the other and jiggles it rapidly, staring out over the street. As the phone rings he has a horrible realization that it’s the middle of the day and while Curt worked odd hours as a nurse it didn’t mean he was home. 

The phone rings. 

Gale jams his tongue against the end of the toothpick until he tastes blood.

A click.

Curt’s voice, sleep groggy and gruff, “Hello?”

“Curt?” 

“Oh my cock-suckin’ god – Gale–” 

-*~*-

Gale twists his braid through his fingers, plucking at the strands frenetically as he eyes the hung phone. His foot is tapping again and he keeps flipping his wrist to check his watch. Benny and Johnny had drifted off to set up shop at the diner across the street and Gale can feel their eyes burning into him through the glass window. 

The phone trills and Gale bruises his fingers lifting the phone off the hook. Jams his acceptance of a collect call into the pinpad and holds his breath as the line connects.

“Gale?”

Gale opens his mouth, tries to say something but all that comes out is a soft grunt. The phone shakes against his cheek.

“ Hi doll ,” John breathes down the line, “ Hi sweetheart. ” 

-*~*-

John had never made it out of Nebraska, the Corolla finally giving out right on the side of the road. He’d been picked up by cops not even a day after dropping Gale off at the bus station, slammed down facefirst on the hood of the car until his tooth chipped and cursing their entire family lines. 

He’d been served, sentenced, and dressed in orange while Gale was sleeping on the floors of the chapel and worrying himself sick. Had called Curt once a week for months, hoping for any sign of Gale, who’d been busy bumming it with a Ska band in Portland and telling himself he’d been abandoned. Had been holding his candle faithfully while Gale had locked his own behind steel doors and shrugged his shoulders, that’s just how it always goes, isn’t it Cleven?

When he tells John how he’d given up hope until finding the receipt the line goes quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Gale says softly “I’m–”

“Don’t worry about it, Buck,” John says lightly, “Rather you were out livin’ instead of waiting around Sacramento for me for the entire summer.” 

“Can I come see you?” 

John laughs softly, voice rich and warm and only slightly choked up.

-*~*-

“If we hadn’t gotten the gun stolen I coulda been looking at a lot longer than fifteen months, Buck. Turned out to be a lucky move after all.”

-*~*-

“We can take the Union Pacific down,” Johnny says, squinting down at the open map on the table, one nail tracing out the route. 

“We?”

Johnny looks up at Gale and scowls at him, flipping to a different page of the map. 

“It’s getting kind of cold up here at night,” Benny crunches on a fry, “Johnny and I were thinking of heading to warmer pastures.”

“Nebraska’s cold too,” Gale says, uninterested in any coddling. 

“Johnny’s worried –”

“Benny, come on – ” 

“ – about some of the route switches down that way. We don’t want you accidentally ending up in Tennessee.”

Gale presses the straw of his drink against his lip, looking at his two friends across the table, “Why’d you do all this? Why’re you still doing all this?”

Benny opens his mouth but Johnny beats him to the punch.

“When we left at fifteen, we had no fuckin’ idea what we were doing. We’d be dead or sent back home if it wasn’t for people all over helping us out and teaching us shit we didn’t know.”

Beside him Benny had turned to smile faintly at the other man, eyes soft and liquid as he roves over Johnny’s profile, happy to let him continue. 

“This wasn’t ten years of us being a thing that–” he waves a dismissive hand, “ – was always there. It’s ten years since we got free . So when we found you right where we were, right at the first leg of our trip it felt–”

Johnny pauses, hunching a shoulder protectively.

“ – felt like something we shouldn’t pass up,” Benny finishes for him, looking back at Gale.

“You still stumble hopping off the moving car,” Johnny adds, pointing a finger, “I’ve got no interest in hearing from some other hopper you got stuck under the wheels and killed.”

Gale rests his head in his crossed arms and smiles at Johnny faintly. He hadn’t lost his footing in weeks.

-*~*-

He says goodbye to his friends in North Platte, Nebraska. Hugs them both briefly. Even Johnny who was bony and familiar and squeezed as fiercely as Gale had expected. Johnny gives him their email and he puts it on the first page of his new notebook along with Curt and Ken’s information and Helen’s. 

Benny hands him a new stack of polaroids, labeled with locations and miles by Johnny’s slanted handwriting and they go in Gale’s pocket next to the snow globe. 

“We’ll look you up the next time we’re in the area,” Benny says, clapping him on the shoulder. 

-*~*-

Gale hitches to Ogallala, finding a ride with an older couple. Pavoratti’s Nessun Dorma was playing on the radio and this time he has a knife tucked in his pocket. 

He regales them with stories of jumping on and off moving trains and feels some odd tickle of power at their awe. 

-*~*-

Gale’s no stranger to jails and drunk tanks. He’s fished his father from their pickled depths enough times over the years to not flinch. But Keith County had rules and security more than a secretary telling him just a minute hon’ Sherif’ll get your daddy in just a second. How’s your Ma doin'?  

He sits, refusing to fidget as a metal door screeches open somewhere on the other side of the glass booth. There’s other visits happening, low murmuring voices and they muffle any approaching footsteps. Gale stares ahead, holding his breath and poking around his cheek like he might find a toothpick to bite his nerves into. 

It’s the body first that comes into view, dressed in garish orange and stunningly familiar in its broadness as it’s folded into the plastic chair. A scratchy stubbled face, deep blue eyes and a smile that didn’t even have the restraint to be crooked. 

Gale’s reaching for the phone – he’s so sick of phones already – cold plastic pressing against his cheek, a shuffling noise from the other end as the connection is made –

“You have a beard.” 

Gale laughs, looks at John who was whole and healthy and looking right back at him like a starving man shown sustenance. 

“Yeah, what do you think?” 

John whistles, low and under his breath, and then his face twists into something close to cracking. 

 Gale leans forward and rests his forehead against the smudged glass. Feels the faint vibration as John does the same. There’s no warmth of contact, no sense of John’s breath against his face. But he’s there. He’s right there. 

-*~*-

Five months into a fifteen-month sentence, John’s not going anywhere soon and Nebraska is getting colder as November creeps on up. There’s little work and Gale’s been unable to find an apartment he can afford. He works and he sleeps rough and he buys a second hoodie when the evenings begin to nip. 

It’s John’s idea that he go to Arkansas, bunk with the Biddicks.

Gale handles it with grace.

“Are you kidding me? I’m not leaving you behind again !” Gale stares at John furiously through the glass.

“Hear me out at least.”

“Fuck that we tried that plan again, look how well it went.”

“It was a good plan, Buck. If it wasn’t for the fucking car I’d have been right there with you.” 

Gale sets his teeth, blinking rapidly and resisting the childish urge to hang up the phone and avoid this conversation entirely. Wants to sit and stare at John furiously through the plexiglass until the other man rescinds any notion of them splitting up again.

“You want me all the way in Arkansas where you’ll have no idea–”

“I have no idea now , Gale,” John interrupts. There’s genuine frustration in his voice. “I don’t know if you’re sleeping somewhere safe or getting enough to eat or, hell, if you’re warm .” 

Gale kisses his teeth, thumbs across his nose, shaking his head in frustration, “I know how to handle myself.” 

John plows on undeterred. 

“And you know right where I am, reading my books and getting three square meals a day and listening to my bunkmate read out loud another letter to his girl.”

“What he do?” Gale asks automatically.

John twists his mouth cheekily, “Didn’t listen to his wife.”

He stares at the other man, losing hold of his anger already, “Are you making yourself out to be the wife here?” 

All he gets is a wink.

“Come visit me sometimes. But have a roof over your head, work with Kenny in his barn. I can call you in the evenings.”

-*~*-

He hops trains all the way to Arkansas, rides in the wells, and hides under his tarp from the winter rains, and camps wanderers jungles all the way there. Hitches the rest of the way and phones the Biddicks from town.

“You need a fuckin’ shower,” Curt tells him when he pulls up. 

Gale grins at him. It’s been a year and a half since they’ve seen each other. 

-*~*-

Ken’s got hobbies aside from fixing cars, Gale realizes the first time he steps through the barn doors, wrinkling his nose at the musky smell. The plants line the walls cheerfully, tucked between farm machinery and cars on cinderblocks. 

“Sheriff doesn’t care so long as we keep it small potatoes,” Ken explains cheerfully, “And we give him first pick of the crop.” 

-*~*-

He learns how to fix a car engine and how to box and quite a lot about gardening. He emails his friends. It feels strange at first, to be expected to share his life with other people, to remember there was a him that meant something to other people.

Helen’s had her baby and she emails over pictures. He looks a bit like Ev in the smile and Nash in the curls. 

Benny and Johnny pick up a stray dog in their travels. Benny mails a polaroid of him curled up asleep with Johnny while the forests of Georgia pass by. Meatball looks very little like either of his parents.

John calls almost every evening and Gale spends the entire hour twirling the cord of the guest room phone around his finger and grinning like a lovesick schoolgirl. They don’t talk about much, really John is eternally bored and locked up and Gale is not willing to steal even a paperclip and throw a wrench in the shiny date of reunion circled on the calendar. Mostly it’s little things like how the wife of John’s cellmate had joined the circus and progress updates the ‘76 Jag Gale’s helping Ken put back together.

It’s nice in a way, John’s voice soft and scratching in his ear. If Gale closes his eyes he can almost imagine the other man in the bed next to him, just heavier enough that Gale could feel the dip of the mattress in his favor, breath tickling over his ear and mustache brushing his cheek. 

The smell of his cheap cologne and cigarettes and sweat. 

He’s talking and Gale’s sliding a slow hand across his stomach, pinky teasing the edge of his jeans and at some point, his breathing must hitch or change because John’s voice pitches suddenly lower. 

“Thinkin’ of me are you, doll?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

John makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat and it kicks right to Gale’s dick, “What about? Me inside you? Riding you? My fingers around your throat or my mouth–”

“Your mouth,” Gale gasps, bites his lip but it’s been months and he’s feeling a bit delirious, “Your mouth around me and your pretty eyes lookin’ up at me and the way they roll a bit when I come down your throat.” 

A quiet shocked laugh, warm as butter and he hears a quiet thunk as if John’s knocked his forehead against something.

“I could do that for you sweetheart. Gonna be on my knees for you so goddamn fast when I’m outta here.”

Gale pulls himself off slow and syrupy, John’s voice in his ear coaxing him through it. Lays quietly with him until their time is up and tells him that he loves him.

The next morning over breakfast Curt calmly reminds him that when he picks up the kitchen phone he can hear any conversation going on

-*~*-

“So what’re you wearing–” John starts.

“I’ll hang up,” Gale says.

-*~*-

He borrows Curt's car and drives out to John for Christmas, brings him a pack of cigarettes as a gift and when they sit in silence towards the end of the visit he knows they’re both thinking about their little apartment in Vaughn, New Mexico.

-*~*-

As a real gift to John, Gale and Curt drive the ten hours up to Wisconsin and take his family out to dinner. When John calls his mother and hears Gale’s voice over the line as well it’s the closest he’s ever come to hearing the other man weep. 

-*~*-

“Gale?” 

Gale hums, eyelids drooping and fingers covered in engine grease. 

“I’m sorry.” 

He freezes, then sits up, “John–”

“If I was never– clear enough or gave you enough security or – hell whatever it might be that made you think I’d have just left you in San Francisco. I’m sorry.” 

John’s voice is thick, scratchy in a terrifying sort of way and Gale’s chest lurches, guilt and regret and indignant anger rising fast.

“Bucky–” 

“It’s you and me Buck. I’ll prove that to you soon as I’m outta here I swear.” 

“You don’t have to prove anything to me, John,” Gale croaks, rubbing a hand across his forehead, “I was stupid. I got scared. Got all up in my head. I didn’t trust myself to trust you.” 

Silence for not too long a time because they couldn’t afford to waste.

“I wanna be done with this place. I want to hold you.” 

“Moment you’re out I’m there.”

-*~*-

A whole other summer passes before Gale takes Curt's car back up to Nebraska. 

He’s shaved his beard and trimmed his hair – not by much but back up to his shoulders – and his braid brushes an unfamiliar spot on his neck as the wind whips it around. He drives along a set of freight tracks for several miles and misses them, just a little bit. 

John was slated for a five am release and Gale drives through the night to get there in time, sat in the parking lot and tapping the steering wheel with impatient fingers, eyes fixed on the front doors. He’s the only one in the parking lot, set back into the gloom and when John’s figure comes through the sliding doors his breathing catches so quickly he almost chokes. 

The sharp-toothed grip he has on his control lasts until John’s in the sphere of the car headlights, one hand lifted to protect his eyes and face screwing up at the brightness. He’s got his backpack straps clutched in one hand, his aviator jacket slung over one shoulder. 

Gale’s slamming the car door shut before he’s even realized he’s exited the car and crossing the asphalt. John’s in front of him and there’s no locked doors and plexiglass between them. He can smell John. Sweat and cigarettes and something chemically clean but he’s in John’s arms, his broad hands cupping under his thighs and his face pressed into John’s shoulder and there he smells exactly the same.

There’s little to do in prison other than work out and there’s a firmness to John’s body that there hadn’t been before, a new broadness to his frame that was something less gawky teenager and more fully-realized man. And Gale too, he realizes, though outpaced by a strong margin, had broadened and grown himself in degrees. 

“Hi doll,” John breathes against his cheek. He’s shaking, “Hi sweetheart.”

“Hi, hon.” 

-*~*-

They make it some miles down the road before Gale’s pulling off into a tangle of trees he’d camped in last year. Out of the car and meeting John somewhere at the front of the car, leaning back against the hood and sucking the blood into John’s lips. John’s hands are working over his body as if unsure of where to clutch first, squeezing and pressing as if reassuring himself that he still remembered the exact shape of Gale. 

Gale slots a leg between John’s thighs, grinds up against him and moans brazenly in his ear, bites at the lobe with wild teeth. John ruts back against him, working bruises into the tendon of Gale’s neck and gasping his name like benediction. Then he’s sliding down Gale’s body, tugging his collar down to kiss his collarbones and tugging his hem up to nip at his stomach to distract from the fingers working Gale’s jeans open.

Swallows his cock down before Gale can even feel the chill morning air on sensitive burning skin. Gale bites back a curse, yanking his jeans further down his hips so John can swallow him to the root and knotting vicious fingers in his hair. Lets John blow him sloppy and wet, fuck his throat hoarse on the line of his cock and grind against his own hand with desperate need. 

It’s been months and Gale’s thighs are shivering in warning before he’d like and he yanks John back up to catch his breath, licking the salty syrup of his own pre from John’s chin and tongue. 

“Lube?” John pants, hands working open his belt with practiced franticness. 

Gale shakes his head, shoving his pants down around his thighs and twisting to press his back to John’s chest. Feels the wet smear of John’s cock against his skin and moans. Fingers slide up his chest, nestle around his neck, thumb stroking his pulse point soothingly.

“Eager too over here but not interested in hurting you.” 

“I got myself ready,” Gale says roughly, “Sitting here waiting for you–”

“Fuck,” John breathes, pressing his lips to Gale’s mouth until their teeth sting their lips and then he’s pressing Gale against the heated metal of the car hood, propping his hips up so John can find the right angle and smearing two spit slick fingers across his hole. 

A quiet moment of shuffling, more saliva, and then the firm press of a cock against him.

“Yes,” Gale hisses, “In in in in– ”

There’s nothing gentle to the coupling, John slides home like he expects his exact shape to still be carved there and Gale lets himself shout into the metal beneath him. Works John as hard as the other man rides him and groans when he drapes his weight over his back, familiar and too heavy.

“Was there anyone else?” John gasps, breath hot on Gale’s ear, voice already ruined, “Was there anyone?”

Gale thinks of Johnny’s arm around his waist in sleep and the glint of Rosie’s eyes over a campfire and the hum of a car engine outside of Sacramento.

He shakes his head, “No. There was never anyone but you.”

-*~*-

Gale watches John’s ears slowly turn red, directing the stream of the hose over the hood of the car again.

“Shut up,” He mutters.

“You better–” Gale chokes himself off, dragging his smile away with a hand across his face, “You better get it all off before Curt gets back.”

-*~*-

“You really rode trains?” John asks, tucked up against Gale’s chest. Gale’s made a deal for one of the cars Kenny’s fixed up and they’re taking to the road again in the morning. He’s told him about train hopping up the California coast and bumming it with a Ska band in Portland and riding under stars and mountains and through fire and smoke.

“Sure,” Gale rasps, “I can teach you, if you’d like.” 

“Hmm,” John hums, shifting slightly, “What’s like?”

Gale wraps his arm tighter around him, nuzzles further into his curls, and sighs as John traces a sleepy hand up and down his calf. They’re all tangled up together, limbs belonging to each other and breathing perfectly out of sync so their bodies never lose contact. 

“Like flyin. Like the ding of the store bell when you’re making your escape.” 

“You done with all that now then?”

“What? Trains?”

“Naw, robbing stores.”

He’s silent for a long time, long enough that John nudges him slightly, fearing him asleep. 

“I won’t miss a camera again, I’ll tell you that.”

John’s smiling in the darkness. Gale can tell by the way his breath changes.

He too much to believe

You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes

Rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve

He got a tattoo on his arm that say "baby"

He got another one that just say "hey"

Rapid Roy by Jim Croce