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switchgrassdevil · 3 months

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mota drabble :)

sickfic-esque w/ buck + bucky, crossposted on ao3 here

The sky is still gray.

It’s late afternoon and the atmosphere is mumbling, churning with oncoming rain. He blinks. The damp-earth breeze prods at him. He sways with it like paper and it whirls in his ears, a seashell roar.

Hollow breaths rasp along his throat. When he swallows there’s a cloying ache. He thinks there might be others around, somewhere, though his vision dims and fogs — he hears wisps of distant laughter, muddy voices. He’s not sure where they come from. He’s not sure where he is. He wonders if John is somewhere close.

Something needlelike hums in his skull; an ache smothers his ribs, his eyes, his empty stomach. A raindrop skips against his cheek. He tries to follow its path but loses track. He hasn’t seen John since they fought — he ought to find him, check on him.

Another cool breath of wind pulls across his neck. Taking a faltering step forward, he reels with dizziness, floundering — his skeleton feels fragile as a bird’s, his head a rush of floating sparks.

“Buck?”

He blinks. Static blooms and bleeds across his vision. He blinks again, and then he can’t see at all.

“Buck?”

The sound is closer now. He has the vague sense that it must be John’s voice, however far-off and underwater. It falls apart on the way to Gale’s head and he can’t understand most of the words, can’t fit them back together.

“Buck, hey.”

Sounds of footsteps. Easy rainfall.

“Hey, hey —!”

Darkness falls to clouds and gunfire, smoke and a loaded die, his father’s fierce right fist.

There’s a moment of thick, murky quiet. Then sound erupts and surges against him, close and disarranged. He struggles to close his eyes, struggles to reopen them. He’s on his back.

The sky is still gray.

The silver wind sweeps over his body, chilling him, but there is warmth, too. There are hands on him — one sits beneath his head, fingers cradling his skull, a thumb brushing again and again against his temple. The other skitters across his forehead, his cheek.

He blinks again, looking dizzily upward. A shape manifests from the coarse, dim sky: a face, dark hair. He’s not sure who the face belongs to.

“There you go, Buck,” the face says. The hand on his face soothes over his cheekbone. It’s so warm, featherlight; he shivers, teeth clacking. “You’re alright.”

Shuddering, he hums. He is alright. He’ll be fine, even if this must be worse than usual — his father rarely hits him hard enough to stun like this. But this is not his father, not with these easy murmurs and gentle hands. Where is his father? Has he left?

“He… g’out?” he tries to ask, though his mouth feels numb and impossible, his words slurred.

The hands pause; the dark, hazy brows draw together. “What’s that, Buck?”

He exhales, pain arcing across his abdomen. The hollow in his stomach stirs and seethes. He winces, gasping, and the soothing touches return. “D’he go out?” he asks again.

Another sweep of breathless wind, another raindrop breaking near his ear. A thumb runs across his jaw, coaxing. “Who, Buck?”

Who? He hesitates, a pang in his head. He blinks, and the features above him pool and run like water. Swallowing against the dry ache in his throat, he lets his fingers skim the cool ground.

The face above him leans away. In some indiscernible place to Gale’s left he hears its voice, tense and harsh, snapping. Boots clod over the claylike earth. Shadows appear all around him, vague and faceless.

With a muted twinge he wonders if the men are standing for a reason, if he ought to go, too. He hasn’t flown in a while; he’ll be rusty. He wonders if this’ll be anywhere he’s flown before.

“‘S’re a new one?” he slurs, watching the shadows grow closer, faint and fumbling shapes. They kneel, they reach.

The man above him leans down close. “Huh?”

Abruptly Gale knows it’s John — he can see the familiar slope of his nose and the hard keenness of his eyes — and his sternum thaws with muzzy relief. “We…” he starts, then trails off with a panting breath. Swallowing, he tries again. “We… know?”

John shakes his head, sweeping a slow thumb under Gale’s eye. “You’re not makin’ sense, Buck,” he murmurs. He raises his head, then, and addresses the crowding shadows, then leans back down. “Just relax, yeah? We’re gonna get you inside.”

Then there are more hands on him, on his legs and under his shoulders, and they grip tight and pull up as the world dissolves to vertigo and breathing.

He comes to in their cabin, lying on his bunk. He feels a bit clearer now, a bit more pained. He must’ve only been out a few seconds — the other footsteps are just retreating. Shifting, his body feels half-numb with cold and thick with aching. His boots are gone.

The cabin door closes with a dull thump. In the new quiet he shivers.

A hand cards through his hair, then falls away. Through bleary eyes Gale follows it, watching John stand. For a moment he’s worried he’ll leave.

But then John is pulling off his own boots and sliding in beside him, pulling Gale carefully to his chest. One broad hand soothes up and down his spine as the other cradles the back of his head, pulling him to rest his forehead against the warmth of John’s shoulder.

“You gotta get some rest, Buck,” John murmurs, fingertips scratching lightly over his scalp.

Gale shudders through the new warmth, the fog, the persistent pain. John squeezes him tighter.

“And,” John says, warm and close against his ear, “you’re eating at least half my ration tonight.” And then, when Gale begins to shift: “No, you are; don’t say anything. If you croak I’m going with you anyway, so no point in arguing.”

Gale thinks he should say something against that, but then John’s lips press against his temple, achingly warm.

“Go to sleep,” John whispers. “I got you.”

Gale closes his eyes, John’s hands soothing his raw mind to something faint and syrupy. He falls asleep against John’s collarbone, lulled by his breathing. He dreams of a sick-gray sky that goes on forever.

#mota #drabble #masters of the air #gale cleven #john egan #bucky egan #buck cleven #buck x bucky #writing #ao3

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