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Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 3

Masterpost

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is back-up commander and CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: Uh oh, the chapters are getting longer. Hope y'all will stick with me because I have plans for these boys. Heads up, this chapter does contain some expressions of homophobia. Also there's no new terms that I think need defining here, but I'm thinking of creating a term definition post for those I've already used.

‘John Egan and Alex Jefferson to make history as first queer and black representation on the moon’

‘Artemis III crew ready for liftoff in one month’

‘So three bachelors and a homosexual walk into a bar, er, a rocket…’

‘NASA targeting November 6 launch’

‘NASA’s diversity campaign’

‘What having a gay man in the space program means for the future of America’

‘NASA press conference gets heated after probing sexuality questions’

‘Biddick goes after reporter to defend fellow astronaut’

–

September 30, 2025

Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

As NASA’s Artemis Public Affairs Officer, it is Marjorie Spencer’s job to relay information about the Artemis program to the public as well as to coordinate press events between the media and the crew and/or mission control. As Public Affairs Officer, it’s her job to wrangle a bunch of rowdy astronauts and convince them to play nice with the press, even when the press doesn’t play nice with them. With this particular crew, it can, often, be like wrangling a bunch of rambunctious, highly opinionated, and incredibly stubborn teenage boys. Or a bunch of selectively trained dogs whose selective training just happens to be whatever they feel like remembering in the moment.

A lot of people don’t truly appreciate how, as Public Affairs Officer, it is Marge’s job to make these boys – ahem, grown men – look presentable to the public when behind the scenes they are the bane of her existence. In the most loving way possible.

Public Affairs Officer, however, is only one of her jobs.

As Best Friend, her job often includes the emotional damage control that flies high above a PAO’s paygrade.

As she finishes up welcoming a room full of reporters to Johnson Space Center, she reminds them that this will be the last press conference that the astronauts will take part in before starting their pre-launch quarantine process in just a few weeks. They will have another pre-launch press conference while in quarantine a couple of days before they board the Orion crew capsule, before they strap themselves to the top of NASA’s most powerful rocket ever created.

“Please welcome NASA’s Artemis 3 crew,” Marge says smoothly. “Major John Egan, mission commander. First Lieutenant Curtis Biddick, lunar module pilot. Dr. Robert Rosenthal, crew physician. Alexander Jefferson, mission specialist.”

One by one, the crew members, dressed in their NASA flight suits, walk up onto the small stage at the front and take their seats behind the table, which is emblazoned with the NASA logo. They each have a gold astronaut pin on their flight suit collars, signifying the fact that they have already successfully flown in space. These four men are some of the most qualified people currently in the space program, and they were hand-selected two years ago to fly this mission. Together, they have logged nearly 1,000 hours of training for Artemis 3, including crew module sims, lunar module sims, zero-gravity EVAs in the neutral buoyancy tank, and lunar terrain sims. In five weeks, that training will be put to use for the chance to put the next human footprints on the moon.

At first, the questions are typical, what the crew is prepared for. They’ve been answering similar questions through much of the training process. How does it feel to be going to the moon? What will each of their roles be on the mission? What kind of training have they been doing? Do they feel prepared? What does it mean for each of them to be on this mission? What do they think it means for the general public and for the future of science? For the space program? For Bucky and Curt, how does it feel to be the first men since the 70s to step foot on lunar soil?

The crew answers them all genuinely and professionally. They joke with the reporters, a trait that has made them endearing to much of the public. They wax poetic about flying to the moon and how they’ve all dreamed about it, how they’re honored to be a part of something so grand, what they hope it will symbolize for people all over the world. They say exactly what the reporters, and the public, generally want to hear.

Until they can’t. Because at some point, no matter what you say, to someone somewhere it will never be right.

To be honest, Bucky often stops listening to the reporters names and affiliations during these things. So he isn’t sure who asks this question, but he perks up when the man says “This question is for John Egan.” Bucky nods and the man goes on. “This crew has become well-known for being a crew of young bachelors, except for you. You’re getting married in just a couple weeks, correct? To Major Gale Cleven, also a NASA astronaut.”

Bucky nods again. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Do you or Major Cleven have any concerns about you going to the moon just days after the big day?”

Bucky smirks. “Well, which big day are you referring to? The wedding or the launch?”

The reporters in the room chuckle quietly. “The wedding,” the man says.

Bucky tries not to roll his eyes. You get married and suddenly it doesn’t matter that both spouses have been professional and highly trained adrenaline junkies for years before this. “Of course, there’s always concerns when it comes to hurling yourself off of a planet,” he replies. “But Gale and I have been through this together, more than once. We know the risks, and we support each other 100%. The only thing that will be different is I’ll have a wedding ring with me.”

As reporters clamor to get the next question, Marge points and a woman stands up, introducing herself. “Major Egan,” she starts. Two in a row. Bucky clenches his jaw, worried he knows where this press conference is about to go. “How do you think coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community affected your role within NASA and within the Artemis program?”

Bucky takes a quiet but deep breath. “My sexuality has never been a secret,” he answers. At least, it hasn’t been since high school. And yet the media still aren’t comfortable with words like gay or homosexual or queer or even LGBT. When they do say these words, it’s almost hushed, like it’s something terrible. “It wasn’t a secret when I flew on the ISS two years ago, and it isn’t now. My qualifications and experience, I think, speak for themselves as to why I am on this mission.”

“Do you consider yourself a role model for the queer youth of today?” Someone jumps in.

Bucky hears Curt stifle a laugh beside him, and he almost smiles himself. “I’m not trying to be any sort of role model or anything,” he says honestly. “God knows you could find better than me. But I am an Air Force pilot, I am an astronaut, I am an engineer, and yes, I am also going to marry a man next month. And that man has been the love of my life for over a decade. So if those facts can somehow align to give others the opportunity to dream, to believe in themselves and in a better future, then I’m glad.” He glances over at Marge, who looks a little wary of where things are heading, but she gives him a thumbs up for his answer.

“So this isn’t just a publicity stunt in NASA’s diversity agenda?” another reporter asks. At the same time, someone throws their hand up and says “what kind of message is NASA trying to send by putting you on this mission?”

The questions and excited mumbling of other reporters jumble into some cacophony of muddled sound, and Bucky bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something out of line. Because as a public figure, anything he says now will be ‘out of line.’

Another reporter stands up, unbidden, before he can even think of an appropriate answer to either of the questions he was able to hear. “For the rest of the crew,” he calls out, before Marge can direct him to take his seat. “How do you feel about having a gay man in the spacecraft with you?”

Bucky can taste blood as he bites down harder. Marge steps up on stage in a hurry, saying something about that being enough questions about Major Egan’s personal life, and any further questions should be directly mission related.

But Curt has already moved to stand up, and Rosie and John simultaneously reach out from either side to push him back down. Alex leans forward at the other end of the table, intent on putting that question to rest with a facial expression that is as close to a glare as can be managed without getting called out for being ‘unfriendly’ by the media. “This crew is like family,” he states with an overwhelmingly exaggerated sense of calm. “John is one of the best pilots NASA has. We are all proud to call him our friend and our commander.”

Marge, now standing firmly next to Alex at the end of the table so she can moderate more directly, nods at him in approval. As she moves to select someone for the next question, though, one of the reporters near the front scoffs and not-so-subtly mumbles something under his breath that leaves Bucky dazed, his ears ringing. Next thing he knows, Curt’s chair is clattering backwards as he shoots to his feet – “What did you say? What the fuck did you say!” Rosie is holding him back from jumping the table with all of his grip strength, and the newsroom is erupting in shouts from the reporters. Questions and insults fly across the room, directed at one another and at Bucky, too. He just sits there quietly, his elbows on the table and his chin resting on his folded hands, letting the words slap him in the face and settle like stones in his chest. He forces himself to stop biting down on his cheek, and watches numbly as security barges into the frenzied crowd to begin escorting reporters out of the room.

When Rosie finally releases his grip, Curt grabs his chair and sits back down with an angry grunt, shaking his head. “Stupid fucks,” he mutters. Marge ends the press conference after that.

As the room is cleared, the crew is shuffled out of the newsroom and into Marge’s office down the hall. She sighs and puts her head in her hand, pacing the room, her heels clacking methodically on the tile. The men stand quietly in a line, looking anywhere but at each other. Finally, Marge takes a deep breath and looks them each in the eye. “Well,” she says. “That could have been… well. That was bad. Okay, that was bad.” She looks at Bucky. “You did great, John. Thank you for how you handled that. I’m so sorry. We’ll figure out a way to handle this better for your pre-launch press conference.”

Bucky just nods. “Yeah,” he says distantly. “Yeah, no big deal.”

If we’re lucky the fag will die up there.

“It’s a big fucking deal,” Curt mutters angrily. They’re used to this kind of thing by now; between John, a gay man, and Alex, a black man, the crew has become overwhelmingly and depressingly aware that the world has not yet changed quite enough to escape derision over difference being normal, over people existing outside the boxes that society has designed. They deal with it, they move on, they do their job. But today was more… well, it was just more than usual. Like the closer they get to launch, the more the media is concerned about all the wrong things. And the more comfortable they are with voicing it.

“It’s fine,” Bucky insists. “Nothing that I haven’t heard before, really.” He can hear it in his own voice, though: He isn’t sure how much he believes himself.

If we’re lucky…

Rosie pats him on the shoulder. “Like Alex said, we’re family. We’ve got your back, and we won’t tolerate this shit.” Bucky tries to give a little half smile.

…the fag will die up there.

Marge nods and checks their schedule on her tablet. “Let’s, um, let’s all take a breather, okay? We don’t have any major press engagements until right before launch.” She looks up at them, and she fights a frown when she sees the varying states of anger, frustration, and dejection on their faces. She knows it’s not her fault, but it’s her job to coordinate and moderate these events. She tries to smile reassuringly instead. “I’ll work with each of you on your own interviews and media appearances over the next few weeks, but I need you boys to focus on the mission. I’ll take care of addressing how this conference ended, and I’ll work with public relations to make sure we can avoid things getting out of hand in the future.” She knows she has a strongly worded email from the director of the human spaceflight program – or possibly even an impromptu meeting – coming her way any minute. She has to work out how to tidy up this mess, but it can’t be her priority at the moment.

She hugs Alex, Rosie, and Curt as they exit her office. Then she looks at Bucky, who has barely moved at all. “Hey,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He glances up at her before looking back at his shoes. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

Bucky shrugs, but doesn’t answer for a long, long moment. “I should be,” he finally sighs. “I’m used to it, really. It’s been the same since my astronaut candidacy was announced. Hell, it’s been the same my whole life.” He scoffs. “I don’t know. It just feels… worse somehow, this time.”

He looks up at Marge again, and Marge feels her chest tighten at the tired sadness in his eyes. Even the toughest men she knows have never been bullet proof. She pulls him into her arms and lets him hold on for as long as he needs as he tries to keep himself together.

If we’re lucky…

“You’re one of our best,” she tells him quietly as she rubs his back. “Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.”

“I know,” Bucky says, but his voice chokes on the words. “I…” He holds onto her tighter, and he can’t bring himself to say anything else.

If we’re lucky…

When he lets go, Marge squeezes his arm. Her assistant knocks on the door then, here to tell her that Neil Harding, the director of the human spaceflight program, wants to see her in his office. She thanks the woman and takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she tells Bucky. “I’m going to work on cleaning up this mess. But once I do, I’ll meet you at yours for some good old fashioned damage control.” Damage control meaning drinks, snacks, and general mayhem. Bucky kisses her on the cheek, thanks her, and watches her strut out of the room, off to fulfill her third role: certified badass.

–

Just minutes after Marge leaves Neil Harding’s office, Gale finds himself outside the very same door, wondering why he’s been summoned out of the blue in the middle of his work day. He’s greeted by a woman who he hasn’t seen in years, looking as prim and proper as ever even in her European Space Agency flight suit.

“Sandra?” He asks.

She turns around and smiles politely at him, that charming and yet almost disarming way she always does. “Gale! Wow, it’s been some time hasn’t it?”

Gale nods, but eyes her carefully in confusion. “Sure has. Nice to see you again.”

Sandra looks unphased though, exactly as he would expect her to. This woman could be faced with a dead body or three or ten – and probably has been – and wouldn’t bat an eye. She is, perhaps, the strongest woman Gale knows, and NASA really is full of strong women. “How are you?” she asks. “And how’s John? Or, Bucky I believe is what people call him around here. You Americans and your funny nicknames.”

“Good, good,” Gale says. “He’s going up on Artemis 3 in November.”

Sandra puts a hand on his shoulder and almost looks… sad? “Oh I know. It’s all the buzz, isn’t it?”

Gale arches an eyebrow, not quite sure what she’s getting at. Before he can say anything, though, the door to Neil’s office opens and the man himself is ushering them inside.

“Gale! Sandra! We have a lot to cover so get on in here.”

–

When Marge finally lets herself into Buck and Bucky’s home with a spare key, armed with ice cream and alcohol, she stops short as she walks into the living room. She leans against the doorframe, one hand on her hip and the other holding the groceries. It’s only 4pm and Bucky, who went home early after the whole fiasco with the media, is slouched down low in the middle of the couch, bundled in an old Yankees sweatshirt with Pepper curled up at his side, her head in his lap. The news is on, a clip from their press conference earlier. A reporter is talking in depth about the incident, and the entire “controversy” over NASA’s “agenda.” As he watches, he doom-scrolls on his phone, and Marge knows he’s digging himself into a deep, deep hole filled with social media comments. His eyes are red, but his face is dry.

“John,” Marge says. He looks up at her and smiles weakly. She motions towards the TV, where the reporter is now reading an official statement from NASA, saying that the organization supports Major John Egan and the entirety of the Artemis 3 crew 100%; that the crew was selected based on merit and capability; that each member has been extensively trained and has shown that they are highly qualified and prepared for a lunar mission; and that NASA stands by all of their astronauts and employees, regardless of identity, and will not tolerate attacks of any kind such as those that occurred today.

Bucky watches the report blankly before shifting his eyes over to Marge. She sighs before walking over to the coffee table, where she sets down the bag of groceries and picks up the remote. The TV clicks off. “Enough of that,” she says. When she collapses down next to Bucky and Pepper on the couch, she peeks over at his phone. Social media comments, sure enough. Supportive and detrimental both. She plucks the phone from his hand and turns it off, placing it face down on the coffee table. “And enough of that.”

John just stares at it on the tabletop, idly stroking Pepper’s ears. He won’t look at Marge, so she reaches over across Pepper and places a hand on his shoulder. “John, look at me.”

He does, and he takes a deep, shaky breath. He opens his mouth to speak but closes it again, biting down on the inside of his lip. Pepper licks his hand. He takes another breath and looks Marge right in the eye. “There’s death threats,” he says. When Marge just frowns, he rubs a hand over his face. “For me. And for Gale. Not many, thank God, but they’re there. I read them.”

“Oh honey,” Marge says sadly. She gets up to switch to his other side, so she can wrap her arms around him properly. He lets himself settle into the embrace and closes his eyes, letting his most trusted friend ground him on one side and his dog on the other.

“Thank you for issuing that statement,” he mumbles.

Marge lays her head on top of his. “Harding wants to talk to you tomorrow, and he wanted me to tell you that the human space flight program fully supports you and always has. I think he wanted to give you some space today. Once you’re up for it, we’ll bring the whole crew in to discuss how to handle this in the future.” Bucky gives a small nod of acknowledgement. “You know it’s not really about you, right?” Marge asks. “Those things that people are saying. It’s entirely about them. None of them know you, and no one can, in any meaningful way, deny that you belong on this mission. This is about their own problems and their own prejudices. You,” she squeezes him harder, “have done everything right.”

Bucky is silent for a long time, until finally he says, “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

“Alright,” Marge says easily. She leans away and looks at him, grinning. “Time for some damage control.”

–

By 6:30pm, Gale can’t get the door of their house open fast enough. He hasn’t heard from Bucky all day and needs to tell him about the meeting with Harding. When he gets inside, though, he’s greeted by loud music pumping through their stereo speakers. As he walks into the living room, he takes in the sight of half empty cocktail glasses and beer bottles, open ice cream cartons and abandoned spoons, a bag of chips and a plate of fruit, and the throw pillows strewn all over the floor. He pauses in his tracks, staring at the carnage as his excitement drains rapidly from his body.

Damage Control.

Fuck.

Pepper runs out of the kitchen to greet him, tail wagging so hard her whole body goes with it. Gale tilts his head and smiles at her. Throwing his keys on the coffee table next to Bucky’s abandoned phone, he crouches down and scratches under Pepper’s collar. “What happened, Pep?” He asks her.

She just bumps his hand with her wet nose and spins around once before trotting off back to the kitchen. He follows her tentatively and peeks through the kitchen doorway, where Bucky is sitting on the counter while Marge stands, leaning back against the center island across from him. There’s flour and dirty cooking utensils everywhere, and it smells like tomato sauce.

Marge looks down at Pep and then up at Gale. “Hey there,” she says.

They’ve been laughing and singing and dancing all evening, but when Bucky looks up and sees the hesitant half smile on Gale’s face, the furrow in his brow, he knows Gale has already figured out that something is wrong anyways. The smile falls from Bucky’s face at the same time it falls from Gale’s. “Buck,” he says, but it barely pushes past his throat as a whisper.

“What’s wrong?” Gale asks. He looks from Bucky to Marge and back. “John?”

Bucky shrugs and averts his eyes, watching Pepper instead as she flops down dramatically on the tile floor. “I’m fine,” he says.

“Come on, John,” Gale sighs. But Bucky won’t look at him, so Gale looks at Marge instead.

She brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Some things were said at the press conference today,” she supplies. “We had to end it early, with security pulling some reporters from the room.”

Gale frowns. “What kind of things?”

“Mostly about John’s sexuality. And your relationship. They were pretty innocent at first, but-“

“If we’re lucky the fag will die up there,” Bucky bites out. Gale feels frozen in place. He blinks, shoves his hands in his pockets, takes them out again. “There’s been worse online,” Bucky adds.

“John,” Gale says quietly. He steps forward, one hand outstretched, but he stops short when Bucky crosses his arms protectively over his chest.

“It’s not a big deal,” Bucky says, ducking his head. They both know that’s not true. ‘Damage Control’ isn’t for things that aren’t a big deal. Bucky shrugs. “At least, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Hey, I’m used to it right? I just gotta keep on going.” He laughs bitterly, but when he looks up at Gale, the hurt on the other man’s face squeezes his chest all funny and he looks away again. Then there’s a warm arm around his back, a hand on the back of his head. He feels Gale standing in front of him, and he lets his head fall forward to rest against his. Slowly, he lifts his arms to wrap around his fiancé, and he grips the fabric of his shirt in white-knuckled, shaking hands.

After a couple of long, silent minutes, nothing but their careful breathing passing in the air between them, Bucky takes a deep breath. “Wow, way to put a damper on this little party, huh? Let’s uh, let’s go back to the part where I don’t have to think about this tonight.”

They both know they’ll have to talk about this later, but Gale nods and lets go. Bucky grabs tightly to his hand, though, wanting a tether to stop this feeling of drifting away.

Marge motions for them to go back out to the living room. “Pizza in the oven. I’ll bring it out in a minute.”

When she does eventually follow them into the living room, carrying a tray of pizza, she walks in on them dancing in the middle of the room to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis as it plays over the speakers. Bucky smoothly twirls Gale around before pulling him close again, and Marge is, not for the first time, in awe of the pure adoration that passes between the two of them. “Shouldn’t you save your first dance song for your actual wedding night?” she asks as she sets the pizza on the coffee table next to Bucky’s phone, still upside down, and Gale’s keys.

They slow to a stop and look at her. Bucky shrugs. “Gotta practice so I don’t trip over myself and embarrass my bride.”

Gale blushes and half-heartedly mumbles “stop calling me that.”

Bucky grins. “What? My bride?” He gently pulls Gale down onto the couch with him, wrapping an arm around his waist and kissing him on the temple. “But I love the way it makes you blush.”

Marge gags dramatically and tells them to eat their pizza.

As they’re polishing it off, even giving Pepper her own little piece, Gale licks his fingers and says nonchalantly, “I have some news.”

When he doesn’t go on, Marge rolls her eyes. “Care to share with the class?”

Gale is quiet for a second, but then a grin spreads across his face as he looks at both of them. “I’m going to the moon earlier than we thought. Artemis 4.”

Bucky jumps up so fast he bangs a knee hard on the table and Marge has to lunge forward to keep the pizza tray from falling to the floor. Pepper jumps up in alarm as Bucky spins to face Gale, ignoring the pain shooting through his leg. “You’ve been home for-“ he checks the clock on the wall. “An hour! And you didn’t say anything until NOW?”

Gale shrugs sheepishly. “There were more important things-“

“No!” Bucky cries. “No… Wait. How in hell did you get yourself onto the A4 roster?”

Artemis 4 is planned to launch in just over a year. Crew selection had been made months ago. Gale rubs the back of his neck. “Well, the two ESA astronauts that were supposed to go got bumped cause of health concerns. ESA was able to put in one other astronaut, but NASA wanted a more experienced pilot in the lander. Harding called me in today.”

“Gale, that’s amazing!” Marge says, crawling across the couch to hug him tight. “Oh my god, this is so amazing. Congratulations!” She’s in part already thinking about the press coordination and social media posting that this necessitates, but holy shit that can wait for now.

When she pulls away, Bucky reaches down and wraps his arms around Gale’s middle, pulling him up from the couch and spinning him around. Then he kisses him hard and spins him again, Gale laughing as he yells for Bucky to set him down. “What!” Bucky exclaims. “You gotta get used to being helpless in the air again, you’re going to the moon!”

Gale rolls his eyes as Bucky sets him down. “Who did ESA toss into the thick of it?” Bucky asks.

“Sandra Westgate.” Gale raises an eyebrow as he says this, watching for Bucky’s reaction.

It’s Marge, though, that jumps in as Bucky tries to process that. “No way, Croz’s old flame?”

“Yep.”

Bucky shakes his head, trying not to laugh. Harry Crosby, Houston’s best flight dynamics officer, had spent a hot summer a few years back – before he and his now-wife Jean got back together after a bit of a break – gallivanting about town with Sandra Westgate. She’s top class, one of the best astronauts in the European Space Agency. Gale is lucky to be flying with her, really. But damn. “Does… does Croz know?”

Gale nods, chuckling. “Yeah, he knows. Saw him gaping at her like a fish as I showed her around this afternoon. They’ve both moved on, but…”

“Awkward,” Marge cringes.

“She’ll be sticking around Houston for the next year, starting in a couple weeks,” Gale explains. “To train with us.”

“Plenty of time to un-move on,” Bucky muses.

Marge throws a pillow at him, but he dodges it and watches as it crashes into a fake plant in the corner of the room. “Don’t say that!” Marge reprimands. “Croz and Jean are very happy together you ass.”

Bucky shrugs. “Sorry.” He looks at Gale, who is still standing facing him. “Now don’t you go getting any ideas either. Sandra’s a strong and lovely woman.”

Gale cups the back of Bucky’s neck and kisses him softly. “I would never,” he whispers, before he falls back onto the couch. Bucky collapses next to him, grabbing Gale’s hand again so he can fiddle with his fingers.

They look at each other, and Bucky presses his lips to Gale’s knuckles. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m proud of you, too.”

Marge takes one last bite of pizza. “It’s sickening how in love you two are.”

Gale smiles shyly. “Always have been.”

Bucky smiles back at him, but too many thoughts are swirling around in his head, and he feels the words choke and fizzle on his tongue.

#clegan astronaut au #clegan #clegan fic #masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #bucky egan #buck cleven #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #buck x bucky #bucky x buck #buck squared

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rambleonwaywardson · 5 days

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Working on chapters 3 and 4 of the Clegan astronaut au and I’ve never been happier I decided to write this as a modern au. These two are just too cute to keep in the closet…

#clegan astronaut au #clegan fic #clegan #masters of the air

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rambleonwaywardson · 5 days

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Clegan Fic Masterpost

Welcome to my blog! Below is a comprehensive list of my MotA/Clegan fics, to be updated as we go.

Clegan Astronaut AU (wip; currently only on tumblr)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Buck and Bucky as modern day astronauts; established relationship (obnoxiously in love and it’s lovely). This AU is currently in progress but has no publishing schedule.

One-Shots

Salt Water

Sleepless

One shots are currently on tumblr but may eventually be put on my AO3 if I build up a collection of them.

Home to You (on AO3)

Part 1 (‘Til Death Do Us Part)

Part 2 (Darling, Make It Go Away)

Part 3 (Lonely Traveler)

The one where Buck and Bucky secretly exchanged wedding bands before heading off to war. Fluff and a lot of angst throughout their time in the war.

#masters of the air #mota #clegan #clegan astronaut au #clegan fic #john egan #gale cleven #bucky egan #buck cleven #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #buck x bucky #bucky x buck #buck squared #rambleonwaywardson

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rambleonwaywardson · 12 days

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Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 2

Part 1

AU Summary: Had some ideas about the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is back-up commander and CAPCOM on the ground at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who read and liked part 1! I have this whole story very loosely plotted but have no publishing schedule. I'll be out of town this week, so it may be longer before part 3 is up. Also, fun fact, this was originally going to take place in the 70s during Apollo, but I really wanted to write Clegan as out and proud. I think you can see why.

See end notes for term definitions.

September 8, 2025 Houston, TX

Growing up, Gale Cleven was always just Gale Cleven. Top of his class, quiet but kind, a little something wild but innately good. He doesn’t talk much about his childhood, about his parents. He grew up too fast, learned too early that life is unfair, that people are unkind – even the ones who are supposed to take care of you. He grew up with his head in the clouds, dreaming of elsewhere. He wanted to be someone, to do something. He wanted to fly away.

So when he needed money to go to college, he took a scholarship from Air Force ROTC. He would become a pilot. He would get a degree in aerospace engineering. He would learn about math and physics, and about the giant universe he dreamed of. He would do something important, something worthwhile, because he needed to be better than the man who raised him.

Weirdly enough, being an astronaut was never a serious consideration. The space program was about impossible to get into as it was, and getting smaller. The heyday of Apollo and the shuttle were over. NASA was under fire once again in the early 2000s following the Columbia disaster, and space travel just didn’t interest the public, or the politicians, as much as it once did. Gale was fascinated by it, always had been, but he was much more interested in the physics, the math, the engineering. Even as he wanted to be a pilot, he hardly entertained the idea of being an astronaut.

All of this, until he met John Egan.

Freshman year of college, a talk, lanky, dark-haired boy with the most beautiful smile Gale had ever seen barreled into their assigned dorm room and hit Gale’s life like a freight train. He called himself Bucky, and he started calling Gale Buck, no matter how many times Gale repeated his actual name. Bucky Egan was also in AFROTC with dreams of being a pilot. A mechanical engineering major, not because he wanted to be or because the Air Force wanted him to be – physics really was not suited to him to be honest – but because he knew NASA would want him to be. And Bucky Egan fully intended to be a NASA astronaut.

Gale could tell from day one that nothing would stop this boy; he was a force of nature, and if something stood in his way he simply jumped over it.

What Gale did not know from day one was that, 16 years later, this was the man he would marry. What he did not know was that this man would completely change his life.

It was John Egan that, one random night during their time in college, drunk on tequila shots, looked at Gale and said “still think it’s crazy you don't wanna be an astronaut. You’d be NASA’s poster boy.”

Gale Cleven was always just Gale Cleven, future pilot and engineer. Until he met John. Now, standing in a crowded bar in Houston, Texas, he’s Major Buck Cleven, astronaut. One of NASA’s poster boys.

The Hundred Proof Bar, just down the road from Johnson Space Center, is a long-time local favorite of astronauts and JSC employees. It’s decorated with military and space program memorabilia, with a tradition almost as old as the bar itself: once an astronaut goes to space and returns from their mission, they get their astronaut portrait hung on the wall behind the bar, joining a small and coveted community of great pilots, explorers, and scientists. Among the Houston NASA community, having your picture behind the bar almost means more than having it at NASA.

Over the bartop, Gale stares at his own portrait. Like most of the others, he’s in a bulky white EVA suit, one hand resting on top of a space helmet, an American flag in the background. The photograph was taken nearly three years ago, ahead of his inaugural six-month ISS mission, the culmination of over a decade of hard work in school, the Air Force, and astronaut training. You can read the expression on his face like a book in that picture: pure excitement, like it was everything he had ever dreamed of.

Bucky’s picture is right next to his. Even though their first missions didn’t coincide, Jackie, the owner of the place and head bartender, insisted that putting them beside each other was the only correct course of action. Bucky looks just as ecstatic as Gale. Soon, though, there will be a new portrait of him in its place, one specific to Artemis 3.

“Here you go, love.” Jackie sets a glass of soda with lemon in front of Gale and he thanks her before taking a sip. He stands there at the bar, one hand on his glass and the other shoved in his pocket, just staring at the photographs. A little legacy to the world that’s representative of something far greater. They’d really made it, in the end.

“I’m proud of you, you know,” a voice says beside him. Gale looks over at Marge and smiles as she wraps an arm around his back and squeezes.

“Thought you weren’t coming tonight,” Gale says as he hugs her back.

When she steps away, she shrugs. “Miss John’s birthday? He’d kill me.”

Gale laughs, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “Please, you can pretty much do no wrong in his eyes. He’d forgive you.” Bucky had come to love Marge like a sister over the years. Gale was worried at first that they wouldn’t click, back when Marge visited them in college for the first time, but he had rarely been so wrong. They get along like a house on fire, for better or for worse.

Marge shakes her head and chuckles. “No babe, that would be you. Pretty sure John would help you get away with murder if you asked.”

“Who says he hasn’t?”

Marge just shakes her head again. “Well, I just popped in to say hi, wish the birthday boy well.” She pokes Gale in the chest, looking pointedly at him. “I meant what I said. By all means, have fun tonight, but I don’t want to hear about any scandals, okay? I’m good at my job, but the press will have a field day if they get a whiff of the next moon walkers doing anything… unruly.”

“Marge,” Gale says, pushing her finger away gently. “They’re young astronauts. Unruly is their middle name.”

Marge cocks her head and stares him down. Gale tries not to squirm under the intense, disapproving gaze of a terrifying woman several inches shorter than him. “Please just-”

“HEEYYYY!” Cheers erupt around the Hundred Proof as the front door swings open. Marge sighs and looks at Gale with an expression that says ‘you’re not off the hook and you better do as I say,’ but she drops it. Bucky walks inside, followed by Curt, Rosie, and Alex. He smiles and laughs and shakes hands, thanks people for the birthday wishes, hugs friends he hasn’t seen in too long. The place is packed with astronauts, NASA employees, space program families, and even some Air Force friends that were able to make a quick trip in. Gale turns around and leans back against the bar, watching Bucky work his way through the crowd.

He’s changed into a white tee shirt and an old black leather jacket on top of dark jeans, a timeless look that’s followed him since he first met Gale in college. He’s pretty sure the jacket itself has been with him through many of those years. Once he spots Gale, his smile gets wider and he pushes his way towards the bar. First he leans in and hugs Marge tight. “Happy birthday,” she says, ruffling his hair before he lets go.

“Thanks for coming,” he tells her. “I promise I will not be on my worst behavior tonight.”

Marge rolls her eyes. “That may be all I can ask for.” She pats him on the arm lovingly. “Enjoy yourself, okay?” She looks at both of the men standing in front of her – two men that she still sees as college boys; men who she is endlessly proud of and who also endlessly test her patience. “Sorry I can’t stick around, but I have to fly over to Cape Kennedy in the morning for some press. I’ll see you boys in a few days.”

They both hug her again before she walks off, slipping through the crowd effortlessly even in her heels. Bucky turns and looks at Gale, glances him up and down before breaking into a grin again. “You wore something cute.”

Gale looks down at himself, picking at the cuffs of his shirt. He’d picked out a black on black outfit: some nicely tailored black jeans and a black dress shirt with the top two buttons undone, complete with polished black leather oxfords – a look he admittedly knew would please Bucky with the way it fit his body so perfectly, the way it accentuated his shoulders and his waist at the same time. “Did I?” He asks innocently. Bucky nods, biting at his lower lip. Truthfully, everything looks good on Gale anyways. Gale shrugs, smirking at him. “Well, I live to please.” Before Bucky can really get any ideas in his head, though, Gale leans in and puts a hand on Bucky’s hip as he kisses him on the cheek. “Happy birthday, John,” he whispers.

They’re pulled away from each other by the sound of someone tapping loudly on a whiskey glass. Curt is standing on a nearby table, bringing in the attention of everyone in the room. He glances at Gale and Bucky. “Sorry lovebirds, but it’s not your wedding night yet. Give it a rest so I can say some words about Bucky here.” Gale blushes and pinches the bridge of his nose as their friends laugh around them. Bucky takes a step to the side, but still grabs Gale’s hand in his. Curt nods and goes on.

“Most of us are here tonight to celebrate Bucky’s birthday. Quite frankly I’m shocked he has this many friends, but thank you for being here.” He laughs with the crowd as Bucky holds a hand dramatically to his heart. “No, really though, Bucky’s an amazing guy. I’m real lucky to know him, and I’m lucky to have him in that Artemis lander with me when we go to the moon in November.” Raucous applause and cheering fills the room at that and Curt puts his hands up as he yells over them that he ain’t finished yet. He looks at Bucky and raises a glass. “Happy birthday, brother. You’ve worked hard to get here, and you deserve every bit of it. May we make history this year!”

Applause rises again, louder now, and people stomp, holler, and shout as Curt motions for Bucky to take his place on the table. He climbs up and takes in the room. “Very touching, Curt, thank you,” he says. “I’m honored to be commander of this mission.”

“Of all the drunks in this joint!” someone calls out jokingly from the crowd.

Bucky laughs and puts a hand up defensively. “Listen, someone’s gotta make a nest for the rest of you dodos. Make sure it’s safe. Just think of me as an overpaid guinea pig. Or, actually, rather underpaid for the circumstances.” This gets some laughter as well, even as no one in the room would ever truly doubt Major John Egan’s capabilities as a pilot or as an astronaut. They all know it’s true, however, that astronauts are not compensated enough for the risks they face. The money really isn’t why they do it though. “I’m not gonna stand here and wax sentimental,” Bucky says. “So thank you all for being here tonight. Now let’s get this party started!”

–

The evening is a blur of drinks, music, friends, and more drinks. It starts innocently enough, with Bucky making the rounds and greeting everyone he can. He and Gale talk shop for a while with Albert Clark, flight director of Artemis 3, and a few of the flight controllers tasked with monitoring the crew and spacecraft for the duration of the mission. Harry Crosby, FIDO; Jack Kidd, FAO; and Joseph “Bubbles” Payne, GNC. Bucky then declares that they need shots, and he remembers a lot less after that.

At some point, Gale loses track of him while he chats with a few of the engineers at JSC, including a hell of a woman named Helen who flew on the ISS with him. They’ve remained good friends ever since, and she’s about the smartest person and one of the best engineers he knows. He’s happy to talk about EVAs and the astronaut vs. engineer experience working in the neutral buoyancy tank, rockets and lunar rovers, even office gossip and who has the cutest dog (Gale, hands down, no room for objection). But it’s been a long day, and Gale – despite finding himself smack in the middle of the public eye with interviews and networking and photo shoots to the point that he isn’t really sure where he ends and the extroverted facade he’d crafted begins – is starting to feel drained. He talks and he smiles and he nods, but he can feel autopilot starting to take over. He brushes his fingers over the glass in his hand, smearing the cold condensation as he takes a sip of soda water. He’s perfectly sober but the music is starting to make his head pound. He blinks and rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

“Hey Buck,” Helen says, trying to hide her laughter with a hand over her mouth. Gale turns to see what she’s staring over his shoulder at and lets a quiet fuck slip out of his mouth.

“Hold my drink please,” he says to Helen, shoving the glass into her waiting hand before pushing through the crowd to where Bucky is standing in front of the dart board, crouched down so the top of his head is below the bullseye with a hand over his eyes. “And what exactly is this about?” he cries as he pulls Bucky away from the wall.

“Hey!” Curt exclaims, echoed by Alex. They’re both visibly drunk, darts in their hands as they look at Gale with displeasure all over their faces.

“We gotta settle this, Buck,” Bucky insists, trying to tug away from the hand gripping his arm. Bucky may be bigger and stronger than him, but Gale is more sober by about a thousand miles.

“Settle what?” he asks, incredulous.

“Well we ended in a tie,” Alex explains, like it makes all the sense in the world. “So now we gotta settle it somehow.”

The four of them stand in a loose approximation of a circle, staring each other down. Bucky has given up resisting and is leaning lazily back against Gale’s chest, fiddling intently with Gale’s fingers. Gale stands with one hand on his hip and the other wrapped around Bucky’s middle, holding the other man still while he tries to make sense of this. “And… the best way to settle that… is to throw darts at your commander? At my fiancé?”

Curt perks up defensively but his words are slurred. “Oh fuck no! We’re throwin’ ‘em above our fiancé.”

“My fiancé,” Gale corrects, as if that’s the most important part of this altercation.

Curt tilts his head and looks at him, his eyes shifting back and forth like he’s trying to make some sort of calculation in his head. Then he nods and points to Gale. “Yeah, yeah. Your fiancé.” He points to himself. “Our commander. Thassit.”

Alex adds, “whoever gets the dart closest to the top of his head wins.”

Gale rubs his face with one hand, groaning quietly. “No,” he finally says.

“No?” Curt asks, pouting.

“No,” Gale asserts again. “Last thing we need is for John Egan to get kicked off Artemis cause he’s lost an eye. Now give me those.” He pushes Bucky gently to the side – which is met with a grumpy protest – and grabs the darts from Alex and Curt, who are surprisingly willing to hand them over.

“Buucckkk,” Bucky whines, tugging at Gale’s free hand as he gives the darts to Jackie to keep behind the counter for a while. “You’re no fuunnnn. Woulda been jus’ like when Tommy threw one at me tha’ time. Was fine.”

“Curt and Alex are a lot drunker, you dummy. You’ll thank me later.” Very unlikely. He probably won’t remember this later. Gale turns to address all three of the men. “Now go entertain yourselves in less destructive ways.”

–

An hour or two later – who can really say – as the crowd starts to thin out, heading home in hopes of getting some semblance of sleep before a full work day tomorrow, Gale finds Bucky standing at the bar, talking to some of their military friends. Jackie – saint that she is – had switched just about all of them to non-alcoholic beverages some time ago. When Gale tries to pull Bucky away, Bucky pouts and leans against the bar. “Come on, Buck, the night is still young.” It’s past midnight, actually. It’s officially Tuesday, and they have to go to work in the morning. Schedules are packed a couple months out from launch.

Gale shakes his head and wraps an arm securely around Bucky’s mid back, pulling him close. Bucky struggles at first but then pauses, turns his head to press his nose into Gale’s neck. “You smell good.” He sniffs again before Gale feels lips gently kissing his neck, making him freeze and try to keep from blushing too hard.

“Okay,” he grunts, pushing Bucky’s head away from his collarbone while he tries to wrestle the rest of him away from the bar. “It’s definitely time to go home. Come on.”

Saying some hurried goodbyes, Gale pushes his way through the thinning crowd with Bucky half hanging on his shoulder and half stumbling beside him. Turning to look around is not an easy feat with 6’2 of muscular astronaut weighing him down, constantly switching back and forth between shouting out to friends across the room and trying to kiss Gale anywhere he can reach. But Gale manages to find who he’s looking for. Pushing between a small group of tipsy women with a mumbled apology, he reaches a hand out to grab Rosie by the shoulder. “You seen Alex?” he asks, raising his voice over the music.

“He left a little while ago!” Rosie yells back despite their proximity. Gale doesn’t know if he should be relieved that the number of drunk guys he has to wrangle has decreased or concerned over whether or not Alex was capable of getting home alone. But then Rosie adds, “Macon drove him home, don’t worry.”

Gale nods and steps closer. “You drunk?”

Rosie tilts his head to think for a moment, looks around the room, wriggles his shoulders back and forth like he’s trying to test his balance. “Eehhh.” He holds up a hand and tilts it back and forth in a ‘sort of kind of maybe’ motion.

Gale sighs as he pulls away Bucky’s hand, which is grabbing at his chin, and pins it down at his side instead. “Alright, you’re coming with me,” he says to Rosie. Then he points across the room to Curt, who is dancing on a table with a man and a woman to cheers from the crowd around them. He wonders how many people Curt has kissed tonight alone. “Grab him and meet me outside. Y’all can crash at our place.”

Rosie nods and heads off to extract Curt from… whatever is happening over there. Gale looks at Bucky, who is staring at him with his pupils blown wide. Bucky smiles drunkenly and kisses Gale sloppily on the mouth. Gale chuckles, long suffering, and presses his lips to Bucky’s temple. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

Bucky taps him on the nose. “Cause you love me.” He can’t argue with that.

–

It takes some wrangling, some arguing, a little bit of threatening, and a lot of protesting, but Gale and Rosie manage to drag Bucky and Curt out of the car and through the door of the pretty ranch-style home on Nassau Bay. The second they walk in, they’re assaulted by two giant huskies all too excited to welcome them home. Meatball – who is really Demarco’s dog but has found himself in a weird co-parenting situation between Benny and Gale as the two alternate space missions and other work trips – just about knocks Curt to the tile floor right at the entryway. Pepper – the one year old husky who Gale and John adopted from a rescue earlier this year – slips and slides her way across the floor in her excitement to press her nose lovingly against Bucky’s legs.

“Hiya Pep!” Bucky immediately drops to the floor by the doorway to give Pepper all the hugs and kisses she deserves, laughing as she, very much not small enough to be a lap dog, wriggles her way into his lap anyways. Curt, meanwhile, stumbles away to the living room. “Couch!” he exclaims, before dramatically collapsing onto the couch and burying his face into a throw pillow.

“Shoes off!” Gale calls. Curt groans but awkwardly tries to kick off his dress shoes to no avail. Rosie rolls his eyes and goes to help. Gale bends down to scratch Meatball under the chin. “Benny’ll be home soon, bud.” He’s been on the ISS for over 6 months now and is due for splashdown next Wednesday. Meatball licks Gale’s hand before running out the door into the yard.

When Gale looks down at Bucky, still on the floor even though Pepper has run outside after Meatball, he’s staring forlornly at his feet. He looks up at Gale. “Buck, can you help me tie my shoes?”

“Your shoes are tied,” Gale says matter of factly, hands on his hips.

Bucky looks back at his shoes thoughtfully, touching the laces with oddly gentle fingers. He tugs halfheartedly. “Buck?”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t get them off.”

Gale flexes his jaw, unimpressed, and nods. “Mkay.” He kneels down on the floor and carefully removes Bucky’s shoes, sets them neatly by the door. Then he hauls the man back to his feet. As he leads Bucky awkwardly to their master bedroom, he looks in on Curt, who is already passed out on the couch. Rosie had managed to get his shoes off and ensure he wasn't lying on his back. He then peeks into the first guest room where Rosie, mercifully still in his right mind, has already claimed a bed. “You good?” Rosie nods and gives him a thumbs up. Gale nods back. “See you in the morning.” They are in for a hell of a training day tomorrow. The only saving grace is that at least half of Johnson Space Center will probably be just as hung over.

Gale manages to get Bucky out of his jacket and settled on the edge of their bed before he goes about changing out of his own clothes, stripping down to his underwear before pulling on a pair of sweats. He is acutely aware of Bucky’s eyes tracking his every move until he goes into their en-suite to brush his teeth. Once he’s done in the bathroom, he returns to find Bucky staring out the big picture window at the full moon lighting up their backyard.

He turns his head to look at Gale with wonder in his eyes. “I’m going to the moon, Buck.”

Gale smiles fondly as he sits beside him to look out at the night sky. He wraps an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and presses a kiss to the side of his head. It really is everything Bucky has ever dreamed of, for as long as they’ve known each other.

“Yeah, John. You’re going to the moon.”

Part 3

Terms: EVA = extravehicular activity (space walks and moon walks)

FIDO = Flight Dynamics Officer; monitors the flight path and trajectory of the spacecraft

FAO = Flight Activities Officer; in charge of preparing the flight plan; manages changes in the flight plan and crew activities

GNC = Guidance, Control, and Navigation Officer; operates spacecraft navigation and control software during flight; responsible for spacecraft orientation

ISS = International Space Station

Neutral Buoyancy Tank = giant water tank at Johnson Space Center used to simulate working in zero gravity

#clegan astronaut au #they are so in love #clegan fic #clegan #masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #bucky egan #buck cleven #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #buck x bucky #bucky x buck #buck squared

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rambleonwaywardson · 14 days

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More Clegan astronaut AU incoming soon but I’ve had the Sleepless one shot sitting in my drafts for a few days and it deserved to be posted!

#clegan astronaut au #clegan fic #clegan

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rambleonwaywardson · 14 days

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Sleepless

A Clegan (Buck x Bucky) one-shot

Summary: Buck and Bucky both struggle with nightmares after the war, but they help each other cope.

Word Count: 2380

Author's note: some hurt/comfort for you all with some fluff at the end. As before, I'm posting here for now, and if I manage to build up a small collection of Clegan drabbles I'll see about putting them on AO3.

Bucky can’t sleep. But he could sit and watch Gale sleep for hours.

They’ve been doing okay, since the war. They’ve had good days and bad days. Good nights and worse nights. Over time, something in both of their minds is slowly, slowly beginning to heal, and the frequency of worse is steadily decreasing. Bucky is proud to say that he can, on average, probably sleep through the night almost every day of the week now. It’s taking time, but he’s getting there. He thinks to himself that he should start keeping track: “nights since last nightmare that made me afraid to close my eyes again…”

Zero.

Tonight, unfortunately, had fallen into the worse category.

Sometimes, when he wakes up, he can’t even remember what he’d been dreaming about. Sometimes, he isn’t sure that he had a dream at all. Just a feeling, an unease, a fear. Something that grips his mind and soul and just refuses to let go, no matter how hard he tries to shake it off. Funny how in war, in a bomber plane under attack, in a POW camp, in a near-death experience, he didn’t notice the fear so much. It was there, sure; he felt it creeping around in the back of his brain almost every second. But it was rarely all-consuming, and he did his best to push it away. He had to keep going, after all. Had to survive, had to find Gale, had to look after his men, had to make it home. There wasn’t time to let the fear drown him. There wasn’t time to truly think about how terrible, how harrowing, his experiences were in the moment. For the most part, he just had to keep going.

Now, in the aftermath, the fear pops up seemingly out of nowhere and makes him feel sick. He finds that unfair. He’d made it. He beat all of the unbeatable odds and survived. He’d found his way home, made it back to Gale. He isn’t dead no matter how hard the world has tried to do him in. And this is what he gets: he gets to remember it all in clearer detail than he experienced it when it actually happened. He gets to be haunted by it.

He made it home, but part of him is still at war.

Sitting cross-legged on their bed in sweatpants and no shirt, Bucky rests his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He takes a deep breath. It’s fucking unfair, but at least it’s getting better. At least this is only his first sleepless night in about a week. We can’t win all the time, huh?

Exhausted but unable, unwilling, to close his eyes again, he watches Gale in the dim light of the bedside lamp. It’s fucking unfair, but at least he has this.

Gale is still fast asleep, peacefully laying on his side with his hands tucked up under his head. Bucky’s actual angel in disguise. He loves the way Gale’s messy hair falls down over his forehead and his lips part ever so slightly. The way he curls his legs up towards his chest just the littlest bit. Bucky wants to wrap him up in his arms and hold on forever. He focuses on watching Gale’s breathing, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. It reassures him that, no matter what his unconscious mind tries to tell him, Gale is here. He’s the picture of health. He’s alive, and he’s all Bucky’s. He’s not about to get taken away in the blink of an eye. Gently, Bucky reaches out and strokes Gale’s soft hair. Gale smiles in his sleep, and it makes Bucky smile, too. He thinks to himself that he’d do everything over again if it meant he’d end up here.

When he pulls his hand away, Gale scrunches his brow and frowns. Bucky blinks, hand hovering in the air, waiting to see if Gale’s face will soften again. It doesn’t. Instead, Gale starts nervously clenching and unclenching his jaw. Bucky’s heart sinks and he reaches back out, places his hand on the side of Gale’s head again, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Gale’s breathing picks up, faster, faster. He screws his eyes shut tight and makes a soft, wounded sort of grunting sound as one of his hands curls into a tight fist under his face.

Bucky runs his hand reassuringly over his hair the way Gale likes when he’s awake, trying to calm him down. It takes a minute, but his breathing starts to slow again, and then his eyes flutter open, unfocused and glassy with worried sleep. He scrunches his nose unhappily.

“Hey,” Bucky says softly.

Gale’s eyes find his. He tries to smile, but it’s just not quite there. “Hey.” Slowly, he sits up, the sheets falling down away from his chest so they sit in his lap as he leans forward, hands on his knees. He’s wearing a thin light gray t-shirt, but under it Bucky can see the chain around his neck and the outline of dog tags swinging against the fabric. Bucky is wearing his, too. They still haven’t quite gotten out of the habit. Oddly enough, they both have found that they often sleep better with them on.

Gale scrubs at his face with one hand and brushes his hair back away from his eyes. He checks the clock on the bedside table. 3:30 AM. Looking over at Bucky, he frowns. His voice is low and gravelly from sleep and carries a sort of guilt that Bucky wants to whisk away. “Did I wake you?”

Bucky shakes his head as he picks at the fabric of his sweats. “Was already up.”

“Mmm.” Gale nods and looks down at his lap, takes a deep breath. “What was yours about?”

They’d started doing this recently. Talking about their bad dreams. For a long time, neither of them wanted to give voice to what was in their heads. They wanted to push it away, ignore it, move on. Didn’t want to bug each other with it, add more weight to the burdens they already carried. Lately, though, they’d found that at least briefly putting words to it, saying it out loud to someone who would understand, helped them move forward a little easier. Instead of weighing more heavily on each other, talking about it lifted some of the burden away.

Bucky scratches the back of his head and sighs. “I-” Shit. It never really got easier to talk about, though. “I jumped from the fort, you know? And they were shooting at me, but they didn’t get me. I was still there. But. I looked over.” He glances up at Gale, who is looking vaguely in the direction of Bucky’s dog tags. Bucky breathes. “I looked over, and you were there, too. And I saw you, and I called your name, but you wouldn’t answer me. You wouldn’t answer. And then, I saw that you were dead. Hanging from your chute. A bullet hole through your…”

Bucky trails off, like the breath was pushed all out of his lungs before he could say the last word. He shuts his eyes tight and smacks a fist against his knee. Then there’s gentle fingers on his hand. A thumb stroking over his knuckles. I’m here, the touch says. Bucky nods. He knows. He just wishes his brain would start believing it.

“Mine was about the kid Nazi in the woods,” Gale says. This was one of his more frequent dreams, about the kids who killed George, the kid who pointed a gun at Gale’s head. In the dream, Gale doesn’t give him the chance to run. Bucky knows it by now, but he lets Gale say it anyway. He squeezes Gale’s hand back. Neither of them are looking at each other. Sometimes it’s easier that way. “I shot him,” Gale breathes out. “A kid. Just a kid. And I shot him.”

When Bucky looks up again, Gale is looking right at him, his face a mess of sadness and resignation, searching for something, anything, to make it go away. Bucky leans forward and pulls him in close, wraps his arms around Gale’s shoulders. “You didn’t, though,” he whispers.

Gale nods. “And I’m here.”

“You wanna try to go back to sleep?” Bucky asks him. Gale just about scoffs, burying his face deeper in Bucky’s neck. Bucky laughs mirthlessly. “Yeah, me neither.” He pats Gale on the side and pulls away. “Come on.”

Hand in hand – a tether proving to each other that they’re there, they’re safe, they’re not alone – they walk out of the bedroom and to the kitchen, turning on the lights. Bucky makes a show of how painfully bright they are even as he eyes the liquor cabinet in the corner. Gale shakes his head wordlessly and guides him away from it. He’d been so nervous since they came home, since the nightmares started in earnest, that Bucky would turn to alcohol to numb the pain. Months later, Gale still makes every effort to make sure that doesn’t happen. He’s thankful every day that Bucky tries his best, and that he lets Gale step in as his moral compass when the nights get hard. Bucky has no idea where he’d be by now if Gale wasn’t here with him.

So instead, Bucky pushes himself up to sit on the kitchen counter, fingers tapping nervously on his thigh, while Gale goes about making tea. Bucky never used to like tea, but he isn’t allowed to have alcohol after a nightmare and Gale insisted that coffee wouldn’t help matters either. So he lets him make him tea, and eventually he had learned to like it simply because it came from Gale when he needed Gale most.

They don’t always wake up on the same nights. Often now, it’s one or the other at a time. And not all the dreams make it impossible to fall back asleep either, thank God. But sometimes, when they’re bad, they’ll wake each other up because they just can’t be alone. It’s an unspoken agreement: it doesn’t matter what they have going on or what time of night it is; if one of them needs the other, they’ll stay awake together. No exceptions. Every once in a while, though, like now, the night turns on both of them. Often, they barely talk on nights like these. Words tend to feel empty; they’ve all already been said. They just need to be. To touch, to feel, to breathe. They just need the closeness and the care. They need each other, and that has to be enough.

Gale hands Bucky a mug full of tea, and Bucky spreads his legs open so Gale can stand between them. Gale tries not to look too intently at the tags dangling over Bucky’s bare chest, and he raises his own mug. “Cheers.”

Bucky half smiles and raises his mug to clink against Gale’s before taking a sip, letting the comforting warmth run through his body. He closes his eyes for a moment and feels the heat radiating from Gale standing in front of him, so close they’re almost touching. When he turns his head and looks out the kitchen window, he can see stars. So many stars, a constant the past few years no matter where on the Earth he’s been. Everything is quiet. He drinks his tea.

After a while, Gale sets his mug on the counter and leans his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky sets his mug down, too, and places his hand on the back of Gale’s head, running his fingers soothingly through his hair. Then, carefully, he slides down off the counter so they’re face to face, and Gale wraps his arms up over Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky rests his head against Gale’s, cheek pressed to soft hair. Gale is not particularly small, but Bucky is still bigger than him, and he takes comfort in being wrapped securely in his arms. Like somehow, Bucky can be a shield, protecting him from all of the bad things in his own head.

When Bucky starts swaying, Gale raises an eyebrow even though his face is hidden in Bucky’s neck. “What are you doing?” he mumbles.

“Dancing,” Bucky says matter of factly. It’s somewhat less convincing because he yawns in the middle of the word and has to say it again.

“Why are we dancing?”

Bucky lifts his head up, kisses Gale’s forehead, and leans back as much as he can so he can look him in the eyes. “Why not?”

Gale rolls his eyes, but he smiles. It’s small, but it’s real, and Bucky smiles back.

They dance all around the kitchen, first just swaying, going in circles to the music in Bucky’s head. Then Gale slips away to put a record on in the living room – it starts on Blue Skies, Bucky’s comfort song – and when he comes back Bucky grabs him by the waist and spins him around. Gale laughs even as he nearly loses his balance and grabs onto Bucky’s arms again. Neither of them are very good, and they’re even worse together, but they do it anyway. And soon they’ve stepped and turned and spun their way into the living room. Bucky has tried to lift and spin Gale around in the air no fewer than three times. Gale has tried to twirl Bucky to no avail, to the point of stepping on each other’s feet and stumbling into each other’s arms. Until eventually, they collapse onto the couch, half laying on one another, and their eyes are still tired but they’re brighter again.

Bucky crawls forward and kisses Gale softly, slowly, before laying his head on his chest. Gale rubs his hand up and down Bucky’s back, wondering how on Earth he isn’t cold. Gale hasn’t had much tolerance for cold since the Stalag. It feels bone-deep and he often finds himself shivering even when it’s warm, unless he has something covering his body. He takes comfort in the warmth of Bucky’s skin, though, lets it calm his senses as they match their breathing to one another.

The last thing Gale hears before he falls asleep is a whispered, “I love you,” and he smiles.

#someone give these boys a hug #please they deserve the world #masters of the air #mota #clegan #clegan fic #john egan #gale cleven #bucky egan #buck cleven #buck x bucky #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #bucky x buck

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rambleonwaywardson · 16 days

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Clegan Astronaut AU

Had some ideas about the boys as modern day NASA astronauts (and Air Force pilots). Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is back-up commander and CAPCOM on the ground at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Here is a part 1. See end notes for some term definitions.

---

September 8, 2025 Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

Despite the crew’s best efforts, the alarm sounds. In another universe, the spacecraft is most likely meeting a violent but silent death as they fail to dock with the Starship lunar lander. Much of the outer hull may be destroyed, maybe a fuel tank or two, making the crew sitting ducks at the mercy of the vacuum of space with nothing but their OCS suits to keep them alive. They’d have 6 days of life support to somehow find a way home.

In this universe, Bucky mutters an angry “dammit” as he smacks the console in front of his face with the palm of his hand. No need to don the survival suit today. All four crew members are instead in everyday blue NASA flight suits, oxygen and pressure down here on Earth perfectly nominal. They’ve been working through this mission simulation for far too long.

Artemis 3 is going to leave human footprints on the moon for the first time in decades, and launch is in just over two months. This crew needs to be perfect, and they only have a handful of weeks to get themselves there. Major John Egan will not accept sub-par performance in this simulator from any member of his crew, including himself. The stakes may be low down here where they can breathe easy and try again, but up there, if this kind of thing happens, the stakes will be higher than ever. No second tries. No mercy.

“Hey, ya gotta be kind to her,” Curt admonishes from the next seat over. “Ya own bloody fault anyway. Tryin’ to dock with a busted thruster.”

Bucky looks over at him, though it’s not a particularly easy feat, laying flat on their backs in the Orion crew capsule mock-up. Bucky and Curt are next to each other, staring up at the consoles, the crew capsule’s control center. Alex and Rosie are in the seats in front of them, or rather, in their reclined orientation, more like below them. “Rather I just let us drift into space for all eternity?” Bucky asks.

Curt puts up his hands defensively. “Just sayin’. If we gotta die this ain’t a bad way to go.”

“Starvation or suffocation, you pick, Curt.” Bucky says crossly. “Or why don’t I just open the hatch door and see what happens.”

“It ain’t Egan’s fault,” Rosie chips in. “Blame the guys runnin’ the sim for givin’ us an impossible situation.”

“Not impossible,” Gale pipes in over coms from the control center outside the Orion mock-up, where he, as back-up commander and CAPCOM, had been observing their training simulation. “And you wouldn’t be saying that if this were a real mission.”

“If this were a real mission we’d be dead,” Curt responds unhelpfully. Bucky can’t say he disagrees. But he’s not willing to accept that right now. Failure Is Not An Option – that was the poster he’d hung over his bed in college. It may not be the healthiest motto if you truly value your mental health and sense of self worth, but when had Bucky ever? He’d worked damn hard to get to NASA, to fly on the ISS, to be assigned this groundbreaking mission. Those words from Gene Kranz had guided him his whole life and he is not about to let go of them now.

He is not about to let Artemis 3 become the new Apollo 13, not if he can help it.

“Let’s run it again boys,” Bucky says. He doesn’t, in truth, know what time it is or how long they’ve been strapped into this thing. He also doesn’t care.

“Bucky,” Alex groans. “We’ve been at it for hours. Maybe we should call it a day.”

Bucky scoffs. “Oh yeah? Well we’ll stay at it for hours until we stop lookin’ like a bunch of little boys playin’ astronauts.” He lifts a hand and spins a finger around in the air. “Let’s go, set it up.” The flight controllers outside collectively groan but ready the sim to go again. This close to a mission, they know not to fight with the astronauts about when it’s time to stop. If the mission commander says go again, they go again.

The next attempt doesn’t end any better. No matter how hard Bucky and Curt try, they can’t beat out this scenario. They’re Air Force test pilots and experienced astronauts; they should be able to handle this with little issue. Two of the best pilots NASA has ever seen, my ass, Bucky thinks. And usually he’s quite a cocky son of a bitch, so he knows it’s been a long day. He groans, banging his head back on his seat over and over.

“Bucky,” Rosie tries. “We’ve managed every other curve ball they’ve thrown at us. We’ve logged hundreds of hours in this thing. We can revisit tomorrow if you want but we’re not gettin’ anywhere tonight.” Crew physician, always trying to keep the peace.

Gale’s voice pipes in from the outside. “It’s your birthday, John. Don’t you wanna get out of here?”

Bucky grins as he stares up at his console. “You gonna drink with me tonight, Buck?”

“Not a chance.”

“Come on, baby. Just one to celebrate the fact that I’m not dead yet.” He can practically hear Gale rolling his eyes.

“No wonder you’re crashing your ship, you don’t have your head on straight.”

“I’ll drink with ya Bucky,” Curt butts in.

Bucky raises his fist for Curt to fist bump. “Curt loves me more than you,” he tells Gale. “Maybe I oughta marry him instead.”

Curt shakes his head, making a face. “You ain’t my type, Egan.”

Bucky narrows his eyes at him and presses a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded. You’re uninvited to my birthday.”

“You’ll be down a drinking buddy.”

Suddenly, just about every alarm inside the Orion simulator – pressure low, oxygen low, carbon dioxide high, hull breach, smoke detected, and the list goes on – is flashing bright red and blaring at the astronauts inside, making them all look around in confusion. Good thing they aren’t actually in space; that kind of half-assed reaction to a catastrophic emergency would likely get them killed faster than their inability to work through this sim.

“Oh noooo,” Gale says mockingly from where he’s taken over control of the simulator. The other present flight controllers can be heard laughing in the background, all too happy to let Major Cleven fuck around with the console if it means getting these astronauts out of their hair for the night. It’s nearly 7:30. Personal life is, naturally, often sacrificed in the space program, but people do still have families to get home to. “All your alarms are going off,” Gale states with a mixture of sass and monotone that only he can manage – the voice of someone who is unequivocally done with this. “You’re all gonna die. Again. Cause you can’t get your fucking shit together.”

“Uh oh, Saint Cleven’s losing it.” Bucky smirks, working to turn off the various alarms flashing in his face. “Good job boys, we’ve pushed Gale over the edge. He’s finally up and killed us.”

“You’ve got a big mouth, John,” Gale says.

“You gonna come in here and shut me up?”

Alex gags from his seat in front of him. “Gross guys, get a room.”

“Just be glad they’re not on the same mission,” Rosie teases. Yes, everyone is glad of that, even the men in question. Well, Gale is at least.

A year ago, when Buck and Bucky first got engaged, Marge – the Artemis program’s public affairs officer and Gale’s long time best friend – informed them of some jokes going around the NASA offices that the two astronauts should be put on the same Artemis mission so they could be married on the moon. Make a big media affair out of it. None of the higher ups took it seriously, of course, but Marge thought the boys would get a kick out of it.

Bucky had enthusiastically yelled “YES!” at the same time Gale, mortified, cried “NO!” Marge hadn’t been able to stop laughing, having to sit down for a minute and catch her breath while Bucky tried to convince Gale why this was a fantastic idea. Gale wasn’t having it, wouldn’t even look at his fiancé for entertaining such absurdity. When Bucky wouldn’t relent, Gale finally spun around and declared, “John I DO NOT want to be worried about using up too much fucking oxygen on my wedding day!” And Bucky dropped it.

Instead, they’ll be getting married in just about four weeks, a nice, classy October wedding – on Earth – a month before Bucky flies to the moon, with about a few hundred of their closest friends in attendance. Gale was worried it would be too big, too much, but he’d been outvoted. A bit of a media spectacle after all. Astronauts are not subtle, and they do not miss a chance to have a good party.

Speaking of parties. They’ve really gotta get going.

The hatch of the Orion simulator swings open and Gale pokes his head in. This late in the day, he’d loosened his black tie and popped open the top button of his neat white dress shirt. His hair gel has started to give up due to running his hands through it too many times — this crew has always been and always will be the death of him — leaving his hair messier than is generally befitting of a NASA employee, indispensable astronaut or no. Bucky fans himself dramatically with one hand as he ogles Gale. “Goddamn boys, there’s life on the moon and it’s hot.”

Gale rolls his eyes, as does the whole crew. “Alright fellas. Let’s get this show on the road.” He nods to them, but before stepping out of the way, he adds, “Marge asked me to keep y’all from getting too out of hand for the public image and all, but just don’t burn any buildings down and we’ll call it good.”

The crew makes various noises of assent as they maneuver themselves out of their seats. With a groan, working out the stiffness in his lower body, Rosie pulls himself towards and through the hatch, giving Gale a fist bump on the way out. He’s followed by Alex, who pats the outside of the simulator and claps Gale on the shoulder. When Bucky pops his head through, he beams at Gale. Exiting the capsule and straightening himself to his full towering height, he swiftly grabs Gale by the tie and pulls him close, planting a kiss right on his mouth in front of the hatch. Behind him, Curt gags as he exits the capsule.

“You taste like coffee,” Bucky tells Gale as they stand in front of each other, faces just inches apart.

“Well, I had to stay functional somehow.” Gale tilts his head and looks pointedly at Bucky. “Some stubborn commander kept us working for hours after we were scheduled to be done for the day.”

“Well who could that be?” Bucky asks sweetly.

“You, you ass,” Curt says. He shoves in between them, pushing them apart with his arms like some kind of divine ruler. “Now save room for Jesus and let’s get outta here. I wanna get DRUNK!”

Gale laughs as Curt walks away, joining Alex and Rosie as they head off to change out of their flight suits and get ready for the night’s festivities. “You better go shower and change,” he tells Bucky. “I’ll meet you at the bar.”

As Bucky jogs away to catch up with the others, he glances back at Gale, who is still standing by the capsule going over some of the notes from their training exercise with one of the other flight controllers. “Buck!” He calls. Gale looks up, the end of his pencil resting thoughtfully on his lower lip and damn Bucky loves that. “Wear something cute, will ya?”

Gale blushes and shakes his head, looking back down at his clipboard.

---

Part 2

Terms: Orion = the crew capsule for Artemis missions

OCS = Orion Crew Survival suits; worn in the Orion spacecraft in emergency situations and during critical mission phases such as launch and reentry; connects to Orion to provide life support for up to 6 days

CAPCOM = Capsule Communicator; the person in Mission Control, typically another astronaut, who handles all direct communication with the crew during a mission

ISS = International Space Station

Gene Kranz = NASA chief flight director during the Apollo missions

#clegan #clegan fic #clegan astronaut au #masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #bucky egan #buck cleven #buck x bucky #bucky x buck #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan

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rambleonwaywardson · 17 days

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bucky egan acts like the war widow of all time in eps 4 and 5. aside from the fact that everyone was gearing up to tell john about buck going down like he was a wife on the home front, you’ve got the suicidality and recklessness, the drinking and insomnia, the need to burn down what took buck even if it reignites his own moral crisis about the cost of war, the last minute jacket switch so if he goes down it’s not in a jacket buck hates… i am gonna be thinking about this forever

#they were more concerned about telling Bucky than Marge

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rambleonwaywardson · 17 days

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Reblogging because the last chapter of Part 3 is now up on AO3! Big thank you to everyone who read, liked, and commented on the Home to You series.

Now onto new Clegan projects!

Lonely Traveler

Part 3 of the Home to You series now posted on AO3! Part 1 Part 2

I'll put a preview below. All 3 chapters of part 3 now posted!

Summary: "I thought I'd lost you." "I love you too much." War does its best to tear love apart, but that doesn’t mean love goes away. It just becomes something that can hurt you more.

Total Word Count: 10,101

---

Preview:

War messes with your mind in a way that a civilian will never fully understand. It messes with your body, with your heart, and with your soul. It goes after love, even, grinding it down like another enemy, when all it is is collateral damage in the raging gunfire. People like to think of war as somehow romantic. Maybe some parts of it can be, in a way.

But war is not, never will be, kind to love. Especially not in a POW camp deep in the Reich, where if the guards don’t kill you, the cold or starvation just might.

And if none of that does you in, well… war sure does mess with your mind, doesn’t it?

–

Who knew the sound of bombs in the distance could carry so much hope. It’s a sick side effect of the human condition: one person’s suffering is another’s salvation. The world isn’t so black and white, though, and when you think about it, it could be said that a few bombs over Berlin isn’t nearly enough to make the Nazi’s pay for what they’ve done to this planet and its people. In a few years time, the human species will wonder how such violence can be natural, if this is just how people are meant to behave. How could this possibly be true? But then again, how could it not?

In a POW camp in 1944, the sounds of an air raid play like a symphony.

The gunshot outside, the man on the ground, the dog trying to tear him limb from limb, the shouting – those instead are the sounds of tyranny, of wielding power just because you can. Suffering for suffering. Death for death.

When the guards yell at the airmen to get back inside, Bucky tells Gale that the goddamn Nazi goons are gonna take them out one at a time. Gale says nothing. He can’t stand it here any more than anyone else, and he is well aware that a toe out of line could mean fade to black. But at least here, he knows that he and John are both alive. They’re alive. They have each other, and at least Gale isn’t alone. He clings desperately to these facts that he knows to be true. This could be worse.

Days pass, and hope is tangible in the barrack once again as the men gather around Gale, watching intently as he fiddles with the crystal radio that Bucky had spent days gathering the measly materials for. News from the front seems to be the only thing anyone really wants these days, short of being far, far away from here. It’s the only thing that carries any promise of an end. The only proof they can get that they aren’t stuck here for nothing, that their sacrifices are worth the pain they’ve endured.

When Gale slams the headphone down on the table, he can’t believe he’s failed. The bubble of hope pops like a sad balloon.

When Bucky asks him one day if, when the weather clears (will it ever?), they should make a move, Gale tells him all but no. Tells him to find a plan with better odds. Tells him “my plan is to get home in one piece.”

He remembers all too well the deadly state John was in when he stumbled into camp months ago. He remembers the sleepless nights spent trying to keep him alive. His own harrowing journey to the Stalag he barely lets himself think about. He has nightmares – about John dying on him, about hands and ropes around his own neck, about crashing through the sky in a tin can in flames, about being the only one left standing like a lost little kid in the street with no one to call home. Sometimes he feels like he’s holding on by a thread to the only sense of hope he has – the fact that they are both here and they are both still breathing. Beyond the fences of this camp, none of that would be guaranteed.

Bucky’s the opposite. Sure he has nightmares, just like everyone else in the sleepless night – about getting beaten to death in a burning town, about Buck’s plane going down, about hiding behind marsh grass with a gun just waiting to be killed, about everyone he loves getting taken out one by one until he’s alone with nowhere to go. This place, though, is not the answer. He’s damn sure of that. The Luftwaffe doesn’t care which of them lives and which of them dies, and Major John Egan is not about to stand by and let them use him – or, God forbid, Buck – as target practice. Why doesn’t Gale get it?

“You’ll die here in one piece,” Bucky tells him.

Gale stays quiet, and Bucky doesn’t even notice the way that he nervously grabs at the ring hanging on the chain around his neck. Gale clutches it for all it’s worth though. Why doesn’t Bucky get it? This could be worse.

They go on, living day to day but hardly living. They eat their rations and assemble for appel and try to sleep in rickety bunks and freezing cabins. Occasionally, Buck gets a letter from Marge: news from home, sending thoughts and prayers for him and John, telling trivial stories to make him smile. She’s even started including baseball stats and scores for Bucky to follow. Gale tries to get Bucky to read them, to maintain a connection with the outside world and understand that someone beyond these fences is thinking about him. John refuses, won’t even touch them. Gale writes Marge that he’s concerned about Bucky. Her heart breaks for them.

None of the men can seem to find a balance between thinking of home and trying not to let the thinking drown them.

They find ways to entertain themselves. Books, music, sports, the occasional play. Gale has started holding classes for some of the other POWs, teaching them about physics, mathematics, and astronomy. It feels good to learn just to learn, to understand something about the world that isn’t shrouded by the war. It’s Gale’s escape, his offering to the men who offered up there lives. Bucky used to love listening to Gale go on about these things, would look at Gale like he’d hung the stars himself, smile and kiss his nose and make him blush before insisting he keep talking. He could listen to Gale talk for hours, and Gale had rarely felt so loved.

Now Bucky leaves the room when Gale starts teaching about the beauty of their universe. He doesn’t want to hear it anymore. Somewhere deep within himself, it hurts too much. It doesn’t line up with the situation in which he’s found himself. He can’t stand the way he feels alone in a crowded room. He can’t stand accepting that this is who they are now, where they’re meant to stay.

Sometimes, Gale will find him, will try to hold Bucky’s hand. He’s getting worried, doesn’t know what to do. Bucky tells him he’s fine, just needs some air, just needs some space. He’s just cold, just hungry, just tired, just angry at the fucking world. He’s fine. Gale tells him he loves him. Bucky doesn’t say it back.

He doesn’t feel right anymore. He hasn’t in a long time. He can’t say why. Words like depression aren’t commonplace yet.

Gale thinks it’s his fault.

After Gale manages to sand down the copper wire of the radio, he’s thrilled to hear actual transmissions coming through the headphone. The BBC, news from the front, their saving grace. Suddenly, the fact that they’re all stuck in this camp means something again. They went down swinging for something far bigger than themselves, and the allies had filled in the gaps. They hadn’t narrowly defeated death for nothing. The men scramble to start copying down and disseminating information, and the bubble of hope starts to grow.

Something like that is awfully fragile, though. It ebbs and flows and hesitantly tries to fill the cold and musty corners of the barrack, wrap itself around these men like a blanket. It’s enough to keep them going, but never quite enough to keep them warm. To keep them sane.

After dozens of men are executed for trying to escape the camp, that bubble bursts again. Things are about to get worse around here, not better, and Gale wonders if they should’ve taken a chance when they had it. Maybe they’d die trying, but maybe they’d die anyway.

But Bucky tells Gale that he might’ve been right, they shouldn’t be so hasty with an escape after all. Gale has about two seconds to feel like maybe they’re on the same page again, maybe Bucky is finally coming back into himself. About two seconds of that hope he’s been trying to cling to. Then Bucky declares that he has nothing worth rushing home for anyways.

Gale’s heart drops. The hope flies away, fading tendrils swirling in the air that he can’t quite keep a grip on. He wants to scream, aren’t I enough?

How many days and nights had they spent dreaming about a future? About a life after the war? It’s enough for Gale to hold onto, but his gut twists as he wonders if the private vows they’d made to each other before they shipped out, the rings they’d had engraved and carefully gifted to one another, had been nothing but words and hunks of metal. What the hell had happened to I made it home to you? Did it all mean so little to Bucky, now? Did Gale mean so little?

Sometimes the words you don’t say hurt the most. He tells Bucky that it’s just this place getting to him, but he doesn’t know how much he believes it. For the first time since Bucky made it back to him, Gale starts to feel alone.

---

Continue reading on AO3

#masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #clegan #bucky egan #buck cleven #clegan fic #buck x bucky #bucky x buck

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rambleonwaywardson · 19 days

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Lonely Traveler

Part 3 of the Home to You series now posted on AO3! Part 1 Part 2

I'll put a preview below. All 3 chapters of part 3 now posted!

Summary: "I thought I'd lost you." "I love you too much." War does its best to tear love apart, but that doesn’t mean love goes away. It just becomes something that can hurt you more.

Total Word Count: 10,101

---

Preview:

But war is not, never will be, kind to love. Especially not in a POW camp deep in the Reich, where if the guards don’t kill you, the cold or starvation just might.

And if none of that does you in, well… war sure does mess with your mind, doesn’t it?

–

In a POW camp in 1944, the sounds of an air raid play like a symphony.

When Gale slams the headphone down on the table, he can’t believe he’s failed. The bubble of hope pops like a sad balloon.

“You’ll die here in one piece,” Bucky tells him.

None of the men can seem to find a balance between thinking of home and trying not to let the thinking drown them.

He doesn’t feel right anymore. He hasn’t in a long time. He can’t say why. Words like depression aren’t commonplace yet.

Gale thinks it’s his fault.

Gale’s heart drops. The hope flies away, fading tendrils swirling in the air that he can’t quite keep a grip on. He wants to scream, aren’t I enough?

---

Continue reading on AO3

#masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #clegan #bucky egan #buck cleven #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #buck x bucky #clegan fic #bucky x buck

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rambleonwaywardson · 19 days

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The aforementioned Clegan, which has taken precedence over my actual research, will soon be up on AO3 (RambleOnWaywardSon). Part 3 of the Home to You series. It’s angsty guys

#masters of the air #mota #john egan #gale cleven #clegan #clegan fic

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rambleonwaywardson · 20 days

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Every time I try to work on my research article submission I end up writing Clegan instead. Send help. Or don’t.

#masters of the air #mota #clegan #gale cleven #john egan

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rambleonwaywardson · 22 days

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John ‘Mouthy’ Egan in every episode | Masters Of The Air part 4

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

#callum turner #john egan #masters of the air #mota

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rambleonwaywardson · 22 days

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GHOSTS: Part 1 of 2

#this is so beautiful #john egan #gale cleven #masters of the air #mota #clegan

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rambleonwaywardson · 23 days

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clegan baseball AU | part 9 | masterpost here | EVERYBODY SAY THANK YOU MARGE AND MR. ALEXANDER JEFFERSON!

special note from bri: apologies for how out of control this part got on me; it pains me to say that the Met Gala itself is not actually in this part, but Gale's outfit IS, so that's gotta count for something, right? It may be after the fact, but I swear we'll get to the Met in part 10 (WOW! who'd have thunk we'd get this far???)

Sunday | April 30, 2023 | South Central Park, NY

By the time Sunday rolls around, Gale's so done with looking at his own face that he actually stops and wonders if this how the rest of the world feels.

John -- ever since landing in Minnesota and then in Texas a couple of days later for even more games -- had apparently decided at some point to make it his personal mission to take a selfie with each and every piece of Gale Cleven he could find when not out on the field.

And of course -- of course -- he felt the need to send each and every one of them straight to Gale without any sort of context at all:

John, posing beside too many bus stop adverts with Gale's face on them to count, grinning goofily at the camera in all of them.

John, excitedly waving at blurred buses going by, Gale's face morphed and out of focus with a set of smoldering eyes still distinguishable enough to be his.

John, in an array of different department stores in what Gale thinks could be malls or airports, holding up a various bottles of cologne or accessories next to banners of Gale in various states of undress, some of them sepia toned, some of them black and white.

John, in even more stores, ridiculously modeling jackets, shirts, or pants from some of the more affordable collections Gale's been brand ambassador for, oversized posters of him in similar suit pieces looming behind John like an all seeing backdrop as he poses for the camera.

Even hastily taken pictures of TV screens, still images from the multitude of commercials he's done, a different piece of John's face awkwardly in a corner or caught on an edge in every single one of them in what Gale can only assume were attempts to get them both in the same frame.

As exasperating as the other man may be with all his shenanigans, Gale's never had so much fun -- or taken himself less seriously -- than he has since meeting John Egan.

It's a refreshing change of pace.

***

Marge is operating at a solid DEFCON 2 when the landline phone next to the front door rings.

She squints at it from the living room, confused, because everyone who should be here, is.

It keeps ringing as she glances at the open bedroom door where she can hear Gale, Alex, and two other stylists still hashing out the finer details of Gale's Met Gala look, none of them even remotely aware of the phone.

Marge slowly puts down the laundry list length agenda for tomorrow -- still a work in progress even after weeks of preparation -- and cautiously extricates herself from the war zone of exploded paperwork and planning that has become Gale's living room.

She warned him she still had a lot to do.

Still without any acknowledgement from anyone in the bedroom she crosses over to the phone, answering it with a polite yet wary, "Cleven residence."

"Heya, Marge," Charles Bailey -- the doorman for Gale's building -- greets, "got a guy down here by the name of John Egan asking for Mr. Cleven, he okay to send up?" He inquires, Marge staring stupidly at nothing for a long couple of seconds, processing. "Hey, don't you play for the Yankees?" She hears distantly and holy shit, this is actually happening.

Gale's actually invited a boy over for -- she glances down at her smartwatch, checking the time -- for dinner?

He's actually invited a boy over for dinner.

At the worst possible time and without telling her.

She's gonna kill him.

"Charles?" She clears her throat, trying to reel back his attention. "We've been expecting Mr. Egan, please send him up and also add him to the approved visitors list for Mr. Cleven."

"Sure thing, Marge, thanks!" Charles hangs up before she can say anything else and she's left staring stupidly at the receiver in her hand.

"Gale?" She calls, hanging up the phone and catching sight of herself in the entryway mirror above the tiny sideboard table where all of Gale's little bits and bobs live.

Her reflection isn't the greatest, but she's admittedly looked worse going into Met Gala season.

"Gale?" She tries again, reaching up to redo the bird nest that's become her hair as she hears the sharp click of dress shoes announcing a man on the move.

"Marge?" Gale hollers back, rounding the corner from the bedroom and looking for her in the living room, pivoting confusedly when he realizes she's not there. "Oh," he frowns, finally spotting her by the front door, hair just as wrecked as hers and looking equally as tired, "what're you doing? You goin' out for something?"

"No," she blurts out incredulously, "but John Egan's apparently coming here? Right now?" She gestures wildly between the door and the phone, Gale's mouth dropping open into a perfect little O of surprise.

"Wait, what?" he goes to glance down at his watch before realizing it's not there, his wrist bare. "Shit, what time even is it?" He backtracks through the entryway to peer into the kitchen at the stove clock. "How's it already after six thirty, how'd we get so far behind?"

"Probably because you and Alex gossip worse than old retired women in Florida," Marge sasses, sidling up to him and resisting the urge to grab at him for fear of wrinkling his suit even though she wants to throttle him, "also -- hi, hello -- it would have been nice to know John Egan's coming over for what -- dinner? Do you even have any food in this place that isn't a juice cleanse? The man needs bread, Gale, he's normal!" She hisses out quietly, aware of other ears in the house and trying not to freak out. "Why the hell didn't you tell me, I could have ordered something in--"

"Alright, alright." Gale tries calms her down even though he's looking decidedly flustered as well, face flushed like a tomato. "It's not a big deal -- it isn't." He tries to convince them both when Marge just quirks an eyebrow. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I am, I just...I know you're super stressed right now and I didn't want you trying to rearrange things to make this happen and I knew after the fitting you didn't have me down for anything so I just figured--"

"Gale." She claps her hands onto either side of his face to make him look at her, his cheeks squished into her palms. "Stop it." She commands, holding his gaze. "I'm mad you didn't tell me, but we'll worry about that later. Honestly, I'm more upset that this place is such a mess right now and that you more than likely don't have anything here to feed this guy. When did you even plan this?" She squeezes at his cheeks, trying her level best not to just shake the shit out of him where he stands.

"Last Saturday." He whines out between puckered lips and Marge really does want to wring his neck.

"You've had this on the books since last Saturday and didn't even think to tell me --what if Alex would have needed to reschedule?" She hisses out incredulously as Gale reaches up to smack away her hands in an attempt to free himself as a tentative knock sounds at the door.

They both freeze, staring at each other in panic.

"I bought stuff to make spaghetti," Gale explains in a rush, "can you preheat the oven for the garlic toast? I got the frozen stuff." He backs away towards the bedroom, abandoning Marge in the entryway. "Just distract him until we're done -- I'll hurry it up, I swear."

"You are a goddamn idiot -- and a hopeless one to boot -- I want you to know that." Marge tells him heatedly as he disappears around the corner and another quiet knock sounds at the door.

Steeling herself, Marge straightens up her sweatpants, tugs at her sweatshirt, and checks her hair one more time in the mirror.

The things she does for Gale, honestly.

"John!" She trills as she whips opens the door, the other man wide eyed and standing there awkwardly in the hallway with a jacket dangling from one hand a white to-go bag from the other -- staring at her like he wasn't expecting her just as much as she wasn't expecting him. "How nice to finally meet you, I'm Marjorie Spencer, Gale's manager?" She offers out a hand. "Call me Marge, please." She smiles, waiting for him to take it before realizing he doesn't a way to do so. "Oops, sorry--"

"No, no, it's alright!" John laughs, throwing down his jacket right there in the hall and grabbing onto her hand with an almost manic sort of enthusiasm. "It's so nice to finally meet you in person, Buck -- sorry, Gale, I know his name's Gale, I swear -- he's said so many great things about you!" He rattles both their arms with a good couple of shakes that leave Marge feeling like she's just experienced a minor earthquake.

"Oh trust me, he's done the same for you!" She promises, opening the door wider. "Come on in and make yourself at home." She bites back a laugh as John hurries to step over the threshold but remembers his jacket last second, twirling on the spot to scoop it up before turning back around to almost faceplant into the door frame. "Oh my god, careful!" She throws out a hand in front of him, grabbing at what she thinks might be a very well defined pec before he can completely brain himself.

"Holy shit, wow!" He laughs out nervously as he stumbles the rest of the way in, his jacket and bag swinging wildly as Marge guides him in with an outstretched hand until he's fully through doorway -- just in case. "Nice save, there, Marge -- maybe you should be the one on the Yankees, eh?" He jokes, face an alarming shade of red.

"I think I'll leave that to the professionals." She winks, finally able to close the door behind them and briefly wondering if she should lock it just in case he tries to bolt. "Can I hang your jacket up for you?" She offers, John hurrying to hold it out before she's even done asking.

Gale's told her he can get kind of nervy, but goddamn.

"Wow." She marvels, taking it from him to hang in the closet while he glances around at everything, shifting nervously in the middle of the entryway.

He really is adorable.

"Feel free to kick your shoes off over there." Marge nods at the little shoe rack currently filled up with hers, Alex's, and their two stylists' in addition to a couple pairs of Gale's. "Oh, and let me just take your bag for you too!" She grabs for it, not really giving him the option as he starts to toe off his shoes.

The poor thing's already been beaten against a door.

"Oh, thanks -- it's not much, but even I know better than to show up at someone's house empty handed." John explains sheepishly as she peeks down into the bag, pausing at the familiar Thorpe & Abbotts logo.

"Gale's gonna love this," she grins up at him, moving towards the kitchen in a way she hopes John will pick up the cue to follow, "he's been so busy lately he hasn't been able to stop by for anything, he was actually complaining just the other day that Helen's probably forgotten who he is by now." She rolls her eyes.

"Nah, she hasn't." John chuckles, seemingly more at ease now that they've gotten the pleasantries and the initial shock of seeing one another out of the way. "She even said to tell him hi when she guessed who I was orderin' those for -- apparently Buck's the only one who ever gets the huckleberry bars." He grins, combing a hand back through his hair and trying not to look around at everything too obviously as Marge feels herself still.

"Huckleberry bars?" She double checks, half in the kitchen and half in the weird limbo space that leads off in any number other directions instead.

She's never been a fan of open concept floorplans.

"Uh...yeah?" John squints at her unsurely. "Buck said they remind him of his mom back in Wyoming, he got us a plate when we met up after the whole ESPN thing." He fidgets where he stands, fingertips drumming against his thighs. "Does he not...actually...like them...?" He guesses slowly when Marge just stares at him.

"No!" She makes them both jump with the force of it. "No, no, he loves these things." She steps further into the kitchen to set them down on the counter with more care than she's ever given anything in her whole life.

It's one thing for Gale to tell someone he wanted to a math nerd when he grew up, it's another for him to even mention his mother.

Letting John in on this tiny little fact about him is just so calculatedly Gale that it's almost infuriating.

"Actually, John, could you do me a favor?" She motions him closer, stepping around him as he does so, swapping them so he's the one standing in the kitchen between the counter and the refrigerator.

"Uh, sure." He blinks at her in confusion.

"Thanks!" She feels overwhelmed with how much Gale's apparently left out when telling her about what he and John Egan talk about. "There's a box of garlic toast in the freezer -- can you just preheat the oven while I go and see what's taking Gale so long?" She backs away into the ether of the limbo space. "It's really not as fancy as it looks -- and just help yourself to anything in fridge or have a look around or, or -- I'll be right back!" She darts away from John's wide eyed stare, disappearing around the corner into the living room and making a beeline for the bedroom.

"Hey, guys!" She laughs nervously, barging right in on four bewildered faces. "We almost done in here? Gale, honey, you're running late for your dinner meeting." She glares daggers at him, and he glares right back, a silent I'm fully aware.

"I think we're about as ready as we usually are when it comes to the Met." Alex glances between her and Gale warily, more than familiar with their antics by now. "Lena, Annika, just leave what you have with me so we don't lose it and I'll pack it all up before I go -- I've got just a couple more adjustments to do before calling it a night?" He looks at Marge unsurely.

She nods to give him the go ahead -- he's not the one she's worried about talking to press.

"Excellent!" She trills as Gale doles out brief side hugs of thanks and farewell to both Lena and Annika as they gather up their respective make up and styling bags, Marge trying not to rush them along too obviously.

They're great girls, young and upcoming -- Gale liked their work enough from last year's Met Gala to bring them on again -- but he's also naively of the mindset that they don't need to sign any NDAs for just this one gig.

He'd probably have his identity stolen five times over by now if it weren't for Marge keeping all his personal shit on lockdown.

She leaves Gale with Alex as she escorts both girls to the front door, holding her breath as they pass by the kitchen and--

no John, she breathes out a sigh of relief.

"Thank you both so much for all your hard work this evening." She makes small talk as they slip on their shoes. "I've got press releases ready and waiting with both your names and contact information for tomorrow -- I'll send you each a copy in the morning just so you can double check me." She accepts the cheek kisses they both lean in to give her.

"I don't know how you do it, Miss Spencer," Lena marvels at her as Marge lowkey herds them towards the door, "you just make it all seem so easy!"

"That's why she's a professional, duh." Annika snorts, and Marge likes her a little bit more. "We'll see you in the morning, Miss Spencer." She opens the front door to let them both out, Marge right on their heels behind them.

"You girls rest up, big day tomorrow!" She waves them off, hovering just inside the doorway to make sure they both actually get on the elevator to leave.

She doesn't slam door behind her, but it's a near thing.

She heads first for the kitchen -- still no John -- before swiveling to check the combined living room and casual dining area -- no John there, either.

Where the fuck does a six foot tall man in an open concept penthouse go?

"John?" She cuts through the length of the galley kitchen to get to the more formal dining room, the space separated from the rest of the living area by a partial wall.

She finds him standing at one of the bay windows overlooking south Central Park, sipping from a glass of water.

Marge really hopes he was smart enough to get it from the Brita pitcher in the fridge and not the tap.

"There you are." She sighs, smiling in relief. "Thanks for preheating the oven, sorry for just dumping that on you."

"Nah, wasn't hard to do." He shrugs, stepping away from the wall of windows to slowly pace around the room. "Although I do have to wonder if all we're eatin' is garlic toast." He makes a face, and Marge rubs tiredly at her forehead with a laugh.

"You and me both."

"Should I be worried about the main course?" He whispers conspiratorially and Marge can't help the snort that bursts out of her.

"Gale's great with snacks, but cooking a whole meal..." She trails off with a wince, "hope you had big lunch."

John looks downright gleeful. "So the man's got some flaws after all." He muses, pointing accusatorily at the framed MBA from Harvard Business School hanging on the wall that seems to state otherwise. "Was beginning to think this guy wasn't real -- bet you're real proud of him for that." He softens, looking at the degree with an amount of fondness Marge usually sees directed at kittens or old people doing something cute in public.

"Yeah, I am." She moves to stand beside him, the two of them staring at it together. "It took him a while to get around to it, but he finally did."

"He said you two have known each other since you were kids," John glances down at her, their height difference more noticeable now than in the entryway earlier when John had been so slumped in on himself as a bundle of nerves, "how long have you guys been p-partners?" He stumbles on the word and Marge looks at him oddly.

"Like...business partners?" She guesses.

"...sure?" John seems to guess right back.

"Well..." Marge starts, thinking back on her life so far -- a failed beauty queen and model turned manager for her celebrity best friend, "it really wasn't planned, it just kind of went that way. We've been through a lot together." She shrugs, turning to look at John to find him already looking back at her with an unreadable expression. "My mama raised me in the beauty pageant circuit since the day I was born, mostly for the prize money, because why try to find a job when you just can make money off your kid, right?" She shrugs, looking away, back at the MBA.

"Wow...bet you won a lot of crowns, though, didn't ya?" John whistles, teasing lightly and elbowing gently at her arm. "Bet you just swept the stage with them other girls."

"Hardly," she snorts, "but I did win a fair few." She admits, briefly wondering whatever happened to them, where they are now. "I ended up being runner up for some pageant out in California when I was about sixteen....we didn't think anything would come of it until they called and said the other girl got sick, so I could come compete instead."

"But...?" John quirks a knowing brow and Marge can see why Gale likes him.

"But," she rolls her eyes, "they said they'd only pay for me to come out there, and mama didn't like that too much -- not because I'd be traveling alone, but because she was worried she'd miss out on a cut of the prize if I won -- so after some pretty nasty fights I just packed up what I could, told Gale I was running off to California, and he...he told me to hold my horses," she falters at the memory, "he told me to wait just one damn second so he could pack a bag too because he was comin' along with me." She feels misty eyed, John the first person she's told this story to in a good long while.

Gale's made them play everything so close to the chest for so long that she sometimes forgets where -- and what -- they came from.

"Lemme guess what happens next." John muses, pretending not to notice as she wipes at her eyes. "You two stole a car and did some crazy Bonnie and Clyde shtick all the way to California."

"Close." She laughs, swatting at him. "We did take his daddy's car, but we had enough cash saved up between us we were able to get out there without committing too many felonies." John sputters next to her and she grins. "I tried modeling for a while but it never worked out for me like it did for Gale -- he worked odd jobs once we got to LA until some talent scout spotted him on a construction site and said he could make him famous just because of his face."

"Well, I'll be damned!" John barks out a laugh.

"That's what I said too." Marge grins up at him. "We've been joined at the hip ever since...we tried dating for a while, but it just never set right between us -- I think we're just too close for it, too much like brother and sister, you know?" She muses, John suddenly suspiciously quiet beside her.

"So you're not...you two aren't...you're not like partner partners?" He asks like it's being strangled out of him and all Marge can do is blink owlishly at him.

"God no, what on Earth gave you that idea?" She demands as politely as she can, the thought of her and Gale still together hysterically laughable at this stage in their lives. "I know a lot of media outlets and fans think we're a thing, that people ship us, but honestly--" She stops at the pained look on John's face, startled.

"Oh." She realizes slowly, an awful feeling of something curling in her gut. "Oh."

"Yeah?" John wheezes out a laugh nervously, face so red Marge's worried he's going pass out right where he stands. "Maybe I should just go--"

"No!" He jumps at her sharp bark, something she'd normally feel bad about. "No, please--just stay there--stay right there." She backs away slowly with a nervous little laugh. "Lemme go see if they're done yet--they damn near ought to be." She backs into the kitchen, scared to let John out of her sight. "Just stay there, trust me." She urges, despite how completely mortified he must feel as he just stares helplessly after her.

***

Gale knows to expect hell when Marge enters a room all cagey-like with fire in her eyes and a polite little smile so sharp it could flay a person wide open.

He's seen her make grown men cry.

He's very concerned as to why it's currently directed at him, though, today of all days.

"Gale." She steps up to him, comically short given the stool Alex has him pedestaled on, voice trembling with barely restrained rage. "Can you please -- for the love of all things holy -- tell me why the fuck John Egan thinks we're dating?"

"What?" He stares at her, completely dumbfounded. "John thinks--"

"We're dating, Gale, yes." She snatches at his tie, viciously pulling him down to her level. "Start talkin' -- what the hell did you do?! How did this even happen?!"

"Marge--" He pulls against her hold, choking himself as his back twinges from the awkward stoop. "Would you quit it?" He coughs out, trying to slap her hand away. "I can't--"

"That man has been out there waiting for you this whole fucking time, he even preheated the oven for your stupid ass -- for frozen garlic toast of all things!" She yanks him in closer.

"Goddamn, man, that's bad -- even for you!" Alex interjects incredulously, clearly enjoying this. "The frozen food and the making him wait."

"That's not the point." Marge snaps down at him. "Why the hell does he even think we're dating, what even--"

"I don't know!" Gale reaches up to loosen his tie, Alex snickering below where he's still crouched at his feet working on his pants hem. "It's never really come up except for--" He stops struggling, wide eyed and staring blankly ahead as the memory pieces itself together in his mind with startling clarity.

Hi, honey.

Yeah, yeah -- love you, too, bye.

We've known each other since we were kids, we're more than just friends at this point, we're...I don't know...we're partners.

"Oh, shit." It punches out of him as he grips loosely at Marge's wrist, staring at her helplessly. "I didn't--he misunderstood--that day in the park, when you called--"

"And you answered the phone with hi, honey because you're the world's biggest smartass--"

"And he was weird the rest of the afternoon -- fuck." He curses, Marge finally letting him pull free to wobble back upright on the stool. "How was I supposed to know he'd interpret partners as partners?" He argues, trying to step down from the stool.

"Ah, ah, ah!" Alex grabs at his leg, holding him in place as Marge swats at his head.

"It's 2023, Gale, partners is just as common as boyfriend or girlfriend now!" She argues, Alex pointing up at her in agreement. "If you want any chance with this guy -- any chance at all -- you need to go out there and fix this!"

"I know!" He hisses out. "He's hasn't left, has he?" He twitches to get down as Alex just grabs at him again.

"Lemme just--" The other man fumbles down around Gale's ankles, doing some kind of intricate tuck-fold thing that he pins into place, "there, done -- now you can go get your man." He smiles up at him winningly and Gale's never been more appreciative of the fact they decided to stay friends after a couple of failed attempts at dating. "Lemme get you a new tie first -- damn, Marge, did you really have to go all out on it?"

Both he and Marge gape down at him incredulously. "You're actually gonna let someone outside of this room see all this before the show?" He asks dubiously.

"Gale, please." Alex looks up at him from where's gathering up thread and needles from the floor. "Based on everything I just heard, you're gonna need all the help you can get," he pats at his leg in sympathy, "just remember that you still got about seven needles in your waistband, though, that'll literally poke you in the ass, so no touching."

***

"John?" Gale's voice sounds from somewhere in the apartment and John wonders if this what an echo chamber feels like.

"Buck?" He calls back, unsure and still standing right where Marge left him in front of the framed MBA.

"John?" Sharp, staccato footsteps sound like they're coming through the kitchen.

"Marco?" He tries childishly, turning to meet Gale head on as he steps out into the late evening golden hour glow that's turned the room fuzzy around the edges, dreamlike and ethereal.

"Polo." Gale grins, flustered and looking so goddamn gorgeous it hurts to even look at him.

"Wow." John clears his throat, mesmerized by the way the amber rays catch on the lighter shades of blonde in his hair -- completely wrecked and positively obscene looking. "I, uh...I didn't...you didn't say dinner was black tie only." He jokes lamely, trying not to stare too obviously but failing spectacularly.

"It's not." Gale promises, approaching slowly with his hands tucked away in his pockets. "This is for tomorrow." He stops a mere arm length away, his cornflower blue eyes practically electric as they dart over his face, taking him in, looking for something. "Sorry for makin' you wait so long, the fitting ran over longer than expected."

"This is for the Met Gala?" John breathes out heavily, taking him in, one small fine detail at a time.

He gapes down at the overly polished pointy toed boots that jut out from the inky black fabric of the delicately draped pants that hang just so from the narrow set of hips -- wide legged and rippling like water at the slightest movement.

It takes every kernel of strength still left in him to bite back a moan as he takes in the black corset-like waistcoat -- cinched and fitted to him like a second skin -- that stops just under his arms to emphasize the broad expanse of his chest hidden away under the pulled taut fabric of an off a stark white dress shirt.

John doesn't know a whole hell of a lot about fashion, but even he can tell these are some quality pieces -- their richness understated, their shape and silhouette androgynous but still provocative.

As a whole, it's definitely a look.

"Your tie's kinda crooked." He observes stupidly, swallowing hard as Gale takes another slow step closer.

"Fix it for me?" He tilts his chin up expectantly.

"Uh..." John starts, fumbling the glass he somehow forgot he was still even holding. "Yeah, yeah, sure." He clears his throat, clenching the glass with one hand and reaching up shakily with the other to poke at the shiny black fabric -- too scared to actually touch it with his calloused fingers -- until it sits straight, the bulk of it tucked down behind the top of the waistcoat.

"Better?" Gale quirks a brow at him, lips not quite a smirk.

"Yeah?" John repeats dumbly as his hand drops away, twitching with want to touch at the sturdy looking material of the waistcoat.

Gale steps in even closer like he knows. "May I?" He bites his lip, freeing a hand from his pocket to slowly reach out for John's free one.

"Uh..." He offers it out weakly, confused, until Gale gently takes it, pulling it closer and closer to himself until he's placing it flat against his side, just at the overly defined dip of his waist. "Oh." John shudders out a breath, wide eyed and still so very fucking confused as his fingers twitch against the fabric -- sturdy, just like he thought.

"My good friend Alexander Jefferson designed this." Gale tells him quietly, his hand a warm weight overlaying his own. "He's my go-to guy when it comes to custom designs for the big stuff." Gale gives him another searching look. "He's very particular about who can see his work before it's debuted, but for you he was willing to make an exception."

"O-oh?" John stutters out in a breath.

"Yeah." Gale glances away sheepishly, cheeks flushing cherub pink in the golden glow. "He thought it might help me make it up to you."

"What?" John rears back, breaking himself out of whatever spell he'd fallen under. "Make what up to me?"

"John..." Gale starts, licking at his lips, "I think you misunderstood me last week -- the week before -- when we were at the park." He presses John's hand harder against his side, like he's scared he's going to pull away. "When I said Marge and I were partners I meant business partners -- just business." He stares at him, willing him to understand. "I haven't..." He shifts uncomfortably, biting at his lip and looking down between them, John's own beat to hell sneakers looking even more shitty compared to the shiny newness of his boots. "It's been a while since I've wanted to get know someone like...like I wanna get to know you." He peeks up at him from beneath his lashes.

John drops the glass, both them jumping as it shatters across the floor. "Jesus Christ." He stumbles to the side, forcing Gale to give him back his hand. "Buck, I don't--"

"I'm serious." Gale rambles, frantic but clearly trying to contain it. "I'm such an idiot -- I thought I was being kind of obvious about it but it's since been pointed out to me that I really haven't--"

"Gale." John shuts him up, both of them startled by the use of his real name. "What...what even are you?" He doesn't even know how to ask it, head a jumbled mess. "Are you...do you even like men or is it like...like a gay for me kinda thing?" He starts to panic. "Because I've been in something like that before and lemme tell you--"

"Bi." Gale's quick to answer him. "I'm bisexual, have been for a while, it's not new -- trust me." He chuckles nervously and John sags in relief.

"Oh, thank god." He rubs tiredly at his face, glass crunching underfoot as Gale makes his way back over to him.

"Hey." He grasps gently at his elbow, making John look at him. "I've starved you long enough." He grins hesitantly. "What do you say we eat and hash this out as we go?" He offers. "Rumor has it there's even some garlic toast in the freezer." He jokes awkwardly and John is helpless against the hysterical laughter that rips out of him, Gale side eyeing him worriedly as he leads them through the minefield of broken glass that glitters across the floor like diamonds.

Marge wordlessly passes them in the kitchen, broom and dustpan in hand, winking when John dazedly meets her eye and looking so very pleased with herself.

She's clearly got all the braincells between them, and John's more than okay with that.

#I’m addicted to this AU #clegan #masters of the air #mota #gale cleven #john egan #bucky egan #buck cleven

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