Bucky Egan returns from war, without a plan or a place to go but he's home. At least that's what everyone keeps telling him, "be grateful, buck up, smile son, you're alive!"
But he doesn't believe that, until he meets Mabel and everything changes.
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"There he is," Gale wandered through the back door of his temporary housing. He and Marge had been in it less than a week but Marge had worked magic and it felt like a home. "Here."
John hated it.
He reached out and took the bottle of beer by the neck and brought it to his lips with a nod. It was warm out today and it was the first time he and the boys had been back together, odd as it was to see them all in civilian clothing. But Gale had insisted on the barbeque before most of them took another plane back to their corners of the country.
John wandered beside Gale as they came to a stop by the back step, "how you doing?" He asked.
"Never better," John grunted in response, forcing a smile to his face.
"Yeah, you sound like yourself," Gale turned his head slowly to look at John with tight concern on his handsome face.
"I'm acclimating." John shrugged because he didn't know what else he could do.
"Being home isn't a curse, Bucky," Gale said, his eyes flickering over to where Marge laughed with a group of her pretty friends. "You can find a lady, settle down..." He could hear Gale talking but the conversation was mute because it wasn't the same. The adrenaline rush from flirting with women, making bad bets, or singing badly at the top of his lungs had been muted the second the war ended.
John just lost his fight.
He lost the urge to give a damn about anything really.
"Are you even listening?" Gale said after a while of silence, his blue eyes finding John's stormy gray ones.
"Not to a goddamn word," a genuine laugh bubbled from his throat. "I'm fine Buck, give me some time."
"You got lots now," he grumbled under his breath.
"So why are you pushing so hard then? If all we have is time, then you shouldn't be so worried." John bit down on the mean things he wanted to say, knowing that Gale was just trying to look out for him. "I'm fine, Buck."
"Say it enough, maybe I'll believe you one of these times." He slapped John on the back and moved toward Marge who offered him a soft smile as he approached.
John's heart felt two sizes too big for his chest. He wanted something like they had, effortless love that kept growing no matter their distance from one another. Marge and Gale were tied together by an invisible string and John could only hope to feel that tug one day.
Dinner wasn't horrible, John could have gone without the needless war stories and pats on the back from people he didn't know but he plastered on a smile all the same and pretended he enjoyed it. This made him seem like he wasn't proud of what they did, all they accomplished but his mind constantly wandered to all the men that never came home.
