i can't let him go by himself, he doesn't know where it is!

“So now why does this sport interest you?” Bucky’s consonants are starting to trip together, the words stumble-drunk on their way out of his mouth. It’s vain to think that the cold night air might sober him up at this point, but Buck supposes a man can dream.

“Boxing?” he clarifies, turning his head to take in the sight of his friend’s rosy cheeks. His breath is warm across the bridge of Gale’s nose. When Bucky inclines his head in assent, he shrugs. “Test of manhood.”

“That so?” John asks. In front of them, Curt’s circling with the RAF gent like he’s looking to eat him. Arms loose at his sides but ready, a relaxed power to the set of his shoulders. He looks calm, but Buck knows he’s been itching for this. They all are. Thirty men gone won’t be rectified with one punch, but it’ll certainly make everything feel a hell of a lot better in the heat of the moment.

Amidst the other guys surrounding them in a cloud of liquid courage and noise, Biddick’s gaze catches on Gale on his next slow circle. Over the RAF pilot’s shoulder, dark eyes meet his, dart over to take in Bucky slung against his side, then back to Buck.

Without missing a beat, Curt winks.

Gale felt the cool kiss of Bucky’s shadow fall over him before he even opened his eyes. Having given up on Croz’s paperback, Gale has spent the past hour or so stretched out on his back on the stones, arms pillowed behind his head with his eyes closed, drowsy and half-asleep, only rousing whenever the shouts from boys in the water got too rowdy.

“Hughlin finally get sick of you sulking around the office?” Gale asks, following Bucky over to the Jeep to help with the last two water jugs. He swings his dog tags around his neck to rest on his back, so they don’t get in the way, and Bucky's eye catches on the way they bounce against his spine between his shoulder blades, jingling softly.

“What can I say?” He shrugs, aiming for nonchalance to disguise how absolutely smitten he feels just at the sight of him. “I’m an outdoor cat, Buck. I’m stuck in one place too long, I get moody.”

“You’re something, alright,” Gale grunts as he hefts out the water jug, and Bucky reaches out and gives his dog tags a playful tug, like pulling pigtails. Gale takes a staggered step backward to compensate, water sloshing uproariously in his arms. His head whips around to glare daggers at Bucky, all blue fire beneath the hard line his brows, which only makes Bucky want to do it again.

“Feel that?” Curt asks, breath ghosting against the hairs on Gale’s forearm. He presses Gale’s hand a little firmer over Bucky’s sternum, the thu-thump, thu-thump steady beneath his palm. “That's the heartbeat of a happy man, right there.”

“‘Course I’m doing it wrong,” he huffed once he’d swiped all the water out of his eyes. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s why I’m trying to teach you.” Despite the tease in his tone, there was a luminous sort of patience in Bucky’s eyes that paired well with the low burning rays of the English sunset behind him. It made his wet curls look soft, the light bouncing off them like a painter’s brushstroke. Gale wanted to reach out and touch. Wondered if his fingertips would come back stained gold.

John held his hand back out for Gale to take, made a little come over here motion. “Here, come on. One more time. We’ll do it together, alright?”

as dancing cheek to cheek

citronella

hands across the water, hands across the sky

phantom limbs (phantom stones in old shoes)

shades of the bloody hundredth (black cherry, coral rose)

too sweet

twobucks domestic haircut

twobucks sport ball au