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Friends in the Crucible
MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU
1: Welcome to Hell Island
Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt
AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.
Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏
Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.
Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!
There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.
So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.
But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.
It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.
Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.
Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?
Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.
Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.
Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.
“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”
Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.
He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.
“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”
“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.
Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—
“All personnel prepare for landing.”
Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.
“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”
To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.
“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.
The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.
“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.
There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.
“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”
“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”
Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.
“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.
“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Lemons, sir.”
“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.
“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”
“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.
Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”
The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.
That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.
She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.
Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.
But no.
Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.
Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.
“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.
Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.
Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.
Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.
Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.
“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”
Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.
Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!
Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.
The sergeant looked away to the other side.
Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.
The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.
Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.
The sheet was tugged up all the way.
That triage was over.
Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.
“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-
“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”
“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.
They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.
“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ‘em under the wings!”
There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.
“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.
“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.
Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.
All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.
They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”
He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.
“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.
“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”
“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.
The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.
“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.
Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.
“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.
“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.
A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.
Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.
Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.
Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?
For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.
“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”
“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.
“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.
“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.
“Sir-“
“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”
“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.
“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”
“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.
“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.
“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.
“Yup, and we leave in ten.”
“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”
The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.
“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.
“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”
“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.
Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.
“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.
“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”
Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.
“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.
“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.
“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”
“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”
Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.
“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.
“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.
“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”
“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”
The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.
“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.
Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.
Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“
“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.
There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.
“You hit?”
“No. Read me, Benny-“
“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.
“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.
Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.
“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.
“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.
Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”
“You got it, commander.”
More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.
“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”
Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.
“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.
“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.
A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”
“How bad?”
“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.
Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.
“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.
“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.
“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.
“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.
“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.
“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”
“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.
“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”
Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”
“I know sir.”
“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”
“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.
“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.
By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.
“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.
“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”
The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.
It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.
“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.
She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.
Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.
He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”
“What the hell for?” Egan balked.
“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.
“I repeat -what the hell for?”
“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”
“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”
There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.
“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.
Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:
“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”
The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.
“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.
Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.
It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.
“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.
John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.
“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”
“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.
“What have I to dread, what have I to fear
Leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near
Leaning on the everlasting arms”
It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.
“Leaning, leaning
Safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on the everlasting arms”
The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.
That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”
There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.
“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.
A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.
“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.
“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”
Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.
“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”
“So should you.” she hinted kindly.
“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”
“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.
“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”
“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”
“Kiss ‘em better?”
“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”
“She scares me.” he objected.
“And I don’t?”
“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.
“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.
“Buck!”
“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”
“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.
“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.
“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.
“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.
“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.
“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.
“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.
“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”
“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.
“What?”
“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”
Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.
“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”
“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.
“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.
“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.
“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.
“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.
That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”
“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“
“Well, mine do.”
“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“
“-you do though.”
“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”
Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“
“-What?”
“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .
“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”
“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”
“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”
“I am.”
“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”
“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”
“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.
“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.
“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”
“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.
“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”
“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.
“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.
Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“
“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”
Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.
When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.
Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.
“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”
Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.
She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.
“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.
“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”
“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.
“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”
He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.
She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.
The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.
As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.
“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“
“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.
“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.
“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”
Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”
“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”
“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.
“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.
“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.
“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.
“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”
“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”
“But it was pretty.”
“Yeah. Not too bad.”
“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.
“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”
“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”
“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.
“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.
“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.
“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.
“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.
Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.
Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.
“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”
“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”
“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”
“Alright.”
“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”
Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.
Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.
“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“
“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”
“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”
“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.
“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.
“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”
“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.
He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”
Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”
When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he���d secured the fabric.
“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.
“No.”
“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”
“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.
“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.
“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.
Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”
Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo
Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added for my MOTA fics)
@stylespresleyhearted
@ab4eva
@earth-to-lottie
@suraemoon
@blurredcolour
@steph-speaks
@crazymadpassionatelove
@rubyfruitjungle
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#mota fanfiction#mine#archive#friends in the crucible#Gale Cleven x OC#Buck Cleven x OC#Buck Cleven#austin butler#austin butler fanfiction#austin butler imagine#masters of the air#Bucky Egan#doc Egan#Maureen Kendeigh#iwo jima#hbo war#john egan#callum turner#Callum Turner fanfiction
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And that's how you clean a hardstand.
#motaedit#hbowaredit#perioddramaedit#hbowardaily#appletvsource#appletvgifs#masters of the air#mota spoilers#mota#hbo war#original#*gifs#saw den of geek compare lemmons to doc roe and i realise i'm just essentially having the same type of favourite again
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Spoilers for my next Clegan fic:
Plus Gale's reaction:
#genuinely i feel great the allergy meds are doing so well#theyve fueled this#yeah i opened my docs to plan england arc of a/b/o fic but this was more fun#ive chosen the fic to cleanse my soul after courting fic destroyed it and my sanity#mota#buck x bucky#clegan#john bucky egan#gale buck cleven#masters of the air
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“a real tough cookie with the whiskey breath.”
oh blind dates oc fest my beloved how i missed you. to the surprise of no one, because i cannot be quiet about anything ever : a MOTA OC this time around. i'm sure this bar probably has a name to be found somewhere on the internet, but until I come across it [ big cartoony shrug ]. anyways, here's Genevieve Laurent, or Gen, if you're friendly. @blind-dates-fest ♡
Tom’s is only a fifteen minute bike ride away. The pay is good, she gets to keep all her tips, and her boss, for lack of a better term — downright adores her.
That’s never been the reason why she’s stuck with it all this time, though. There were better paying jobs in equal distance, and if she really, really wanted to, she thinks she’d do a pretty okay job packing parachutes or something of a similar vein. Respectable work, her mother would call it, which was secret code for: work that will keep you out of trouble, and possibly off the street before midnight. But that was really what it came down to: whether Genevieve wanted to do it. And for all the respect she had for those women, she knew that wasn’t the thing that called to her — not like it did to Claire, who was now off in London with the best and brightest, working in the Foreign Office.
Whatever that meant.
Much more glamorous than Genevieve’s own station, and she’s fairly certain none of their mother’s letters are imploring Claire to quit anytime soon. She was almost apologetic, in a way, that she couldn’t entice her family with letters filled with omissions, with work so secret she could hardly speak of it — but the beer wouldn’t pour itself and somebody had to do it after all those hours in flight.
“Thought you were leaving me out to dry tonight, sweetheart,” There’s a solid hand gripping her shoulder and squeezing, and Tom gives her a smile that’s all crows feet and genuine appreciation. Of course, the place wasn’t actually called Tom’s — but the sign was so faded that she and the other girls just tended to refer to it by the name of their esteemed publican. Genevieve returns the smile.
“And miss out on all this? Wouldn’t dream of it.” As if to accent her point, there’s a wave of hoots and hollering from the floor beyond the bar — no doubt from a bet won or a game of darts coming to its speedy conclusion. The song of the end of the work day. He gives her shoulder a shake, then lets go.
“Do me a favor and take those whiskeys to the table in the back? I think Elsie’s got caught up out there,” she follows his gaze to one of the other girls on shift —Elsie’s smile is easy and the tray on the table is empty, but she’s chatting up a storm at a table of men in brown uniforms. And Genevieve can’t exactly blame her, because while they knew practically every member of the RAF who came in and out on their days off, Americans were a sight to behold. Which is probably why Tom is sending her to the table in the back, with the hopes that she’ll be speedy.
“Yessir,” Genevieve hums, taking the tray of glasses with little fuss, making her way across the bustling floor with practiced hustle.
It’s not the pay that keeps her here, or the warmth of her boss. Not even the fact that she could do every job in this place, if she had to.
Genevieve had a penchant for poking her nose into places for the thrill of it — and there really was no thrill quite like conversation with people who had time to kill and liquor in their systems.
She recognizes the RAF officer at the table: David Griffiths, who Claire knew better than Genevieve did. She’d laughed when Claire told her he joined the RAF, and as an officer, no less. He’d been meek before the war, to put it lightly — maybe that slate-colored uniform and dark blue tie gave him the confidence he once lacked, she didn’t know. And then a couple regulars from around town. So the one in a brown uniform as opposed to their English blue sticks out like a sore thumb, and her curiosity is piqued in spite of David’s attempt to draw her attention with his smile alone.
“Thought old Tom was keeping you in the back tonight.”
“You know, it’s much easier to simply say you missed me, Griffiths,” she hums, leaning over to set down the tray. “Whiskeys for the table, yeah?” David clears his throat and makes a show of adjusting his cuffs, flaunting the new insignia adorning his sleeve as he had for every promotion prior. Genevieve straightens out, wraps her arm around his shoulder to pick off a stray thread.
“Captain Griffiths, congratulations,” Genevieve acknowledges just for the sake of him, then diverts her attention to look over the table, eyes settling on the new face staring right back at her. His dark hair curls over his forehead, with a straight nose and a pretty pair of lips — the wings on his jacket are catching lamplight. The smile on his face is what’s got her the most curious. “And who’ve you brought to cause trouble in Tom’s respectable place of business?”
The smile grows, the stranger leans back in his seat.
“No trouble over here ma’am, not unless you hate singin’.” His voice is deep and gravelly and, well, very American. His tone goes up at the end of the sentence, like it’s a question she’s meant to answer, and Genevieve wonders if it still counts as a bait when she can recognize it for what it is. She raises her brows, David’s hand curls around her wrist loosely as if to remind her that he’s there.
“Only if it’s bad.”
“Best keep your mouth shut then, Major, wouldn’t want to cause a scene,” around them, the other men chuckle at David’s quip — Genevieve pulls her wrist from his barely-there grasp as the Major raises his glass to his lips, before waving a hand dismissively on the swallow.
“Don’t listen to him, I’m like a canary over here.” He draws out each syllable, his smile only growing. She doesn’t believe him for a second.
“Well, Major, make sure not to shatter any glasses with your tunes and you’ll have soothed all my worries,” He chuckles at that, sitting back in the chair and Genevieve looks him up and down rather shamelessly before patting Griffiths’ shoulder. “Enjoy your evening, boys.”
Genevieve knows the feeling well — that sensation of eyes tracking her every movement as she walks away. She’d call it a sixth sense, the way she can make the distinction between the slighted nature of Griffiths’ staring as opposed to the more welcome lingering look of the Major, who’s name she’d surely get by the end of the night. If Claire were here, she’d probably laugh, then apologize to Griffiths for her little sister’s fleeting attention span, accompanied with some remark about how Genevieve had a penchant for things shiny and new. Genevieve would beg to differ and say it was more like she had a penchant for the things she didn’t understand.
And so what if she liked the staring, and leaving the air more charged than she’d found it?
Regardless of the interaction, the night wears on, and so long as the taps are flowing Genevieve is busy enough to keep from staring at the back table for too long. At some point, they stand up and make their way toward the dartboard (and Elsie with them, who shoots her a wink from across the room that has her laughing and Tom groaning from their spots behind the bar). Luckily, she’s only gone for maybe fifteen minutes — and she comes back with orders for Tom, before scurrying over and leaning forward on the bar.
“Better straighten up over there, Genny,” Elsie leans forward further to tuck one of Genevieve’s stray hairs behind her ear.
“Back from your mission so soon?”
“Well I had to make sure the prize was in place.” Genevieve raises an inquisitive brow.
“And that means..?”
“It means—” Elsie is effectively cut off by another round of hollering, and Genevieve knows the grin on the other girl’s face all too well. Elsie turns around and she follows the girl’s eyes to several things. One, Griffiths walking out of the pub, two, Major Canary laughing as he makes his way over and three, a conglomerate of Irishmen clapping his shoulders and shaking them in congratulations. “Well now we know who the winner is. Good luck!”
Before Genevieve can get a word in, Elsie’s scurrying back over to Tom on the other end of the bar to grab the drinks he’s lined up. She turns her back to the floor, but still hears a heavy exhale as someone takes a seat behind her. Then she tilts her head to look, and makes little attempt to withhold her smile as the dots connect fairly quickly in her head.
“Major Canary,” Genevieve hums in greeting. “Am I getting you anything?”
“Whiskey’s fine,” He looks around, like he’s taking a survey of the room, then turns to rest both elbows on the polished wood as she grabs one of the glasses that’s already dried. “Think you got me in trouble with your boyfriend back there,” he laments with a grin, running his thumb over his bottom lip.
“Who, me?” Genevieve slides the glass along the countertop. “You might have the wrong girl, sir.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?” He takes that tone again — so clearly baiting her and Genevieve is, admittedly, a little too eager to take what he’s giving this time.
“Well for one, I don’t have a boyfriend,” she hums, holding up the pointer finger, and then her middle one, “And two, I’m willing to wager it was the dart game that got you in trouble, Major.” She slides the glass over the countertop, and he takes it. He’s closer now than he was at the table — she can finally make out that his eyes are blue, like the RAF uniforms.
“Yeah? How much are you willing to bet?”
“Well, how much did you earn in your game? Must’ve been a hefty sum for the Captain to walk out like that.” Genevieve leans forward on the bar now, tilting her head as she looks at him, already knowing the answer. His eyes flit over her face and down the length of her neck, following the curve of her shape before the bar cuts off his vantage point, then he goes back to returning her stare. He brings the glass to his lips, then licks off the excess before he opens his mouth again.
“A shot with the pretty girl serving drinks tonight? Pretty priceless if you ask me.”
“Well that’s a line if I’ve ever heard one,” Genevieve remarks with an airy laugh.
“But it made you laugh. Must be doing something right.” He counters, and she laughs again with a roll of her eyes. “See? Just did it again.” Genevieve shakes her head slightly.
“Well if my company’s so priceless why haven’t you asked my name yet? Bragging rights and all that.” It’s hardly the bait of their earlier conversation — but it’s something, and she wonders if he recognizes it for what it is, like she had at the table. He finishes off the glass, pushing it back to her with his fingertips and holding her gaze all-the-while.
“Well my bragging was gonna be making you laugh ‘till your boss throws me out, but I should probably get the name so I know who to ask for next time, right?” She takes his glass, and moves to fill it again — feeling both like the belle of a ball and like one of those wood logs in a fireplace crumbling into charcoals, giving off sparks. Somewhere in the back of her head, Claire is screaming at her to stop dancing so close to cliffsides before she takes a tumble she’ll regret, but right now she doesn’t feel any ground giving way beneath her feet.
“Genevieve. Gen, if you’re friendly.” She hums out, taking her time on his refill with the express purpose of keeping him there a little longer. The laugh he lets out is breathy, almost disbelieving, and she looks back up at him through her lashes. “Your turn, or should I just keep calling you Major Canary?”
“My turn, she says,” he mutters, probably more to himself than her even if she can hear it. She passes the glass back over. “Well if we’re being friendly it’s Bucky. Egan.” He exaggerates it — the word friendly, but Genevieve’s really hanging on the ‘if’. She feels almost like a kid picking apart words to prove her point. She should’ve been a lawyer. ‘If’ meant she had options, and maybe she feels a little prideful; to know she has control of where this thing goes. It’s a rush. The kind she wouldn’t get packing parachutes or up in an office. The kind only another person could give her.
The ground gives a little beneath her feet, but Genevieve is undeterred.
“But I take it you’re aiming for a little more than that, is that right, Bucky?”
The smug grin on his face is as much of an answer as any.
And it excites her down to her bones.
#masters of the air#john egan x ofc#masters of the air oc#mota fic#mota fanfic#mota fanfiction#blind dates oc fest 2024#. genevieve laurent#...yes there's France lore#I’ve got lady pilots existing in my docs Now but By God Tom’s Girls stole my keys. I just think they’re neat#took a little inspo from a historical fiction book I read for Claire admittedly#shoutout bletchley park codebreakers#this one for all my little sisters with academically gifted big sisters [ raises hand ]
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Here’s unused content from my mota Crosby x Bubbles fic “and maybe if i hold you now”, but can be read alone!!! It’s basically just some fluff of Blakely’s crew after the October 8, 1943 mission to Bremen where Just-a-Snappin’ had gone down and their crew was presumed KIA. They returned late that night much to everyone’s surprise, though several of their crew were injured and one KIA.
Bubbles pulled off the path and into a gap a few buildings down from the interrogation hut. He glanced at his watch as he got out of the jeep. H-minus 0410. Inside, Blakely, Kidd, Douglass, Forkner, and Thornton were seated around a table with Colonel Harding. Standing behind the Colonel were several other members of Group Ops and lurking in the corner of the room with a dark look on his face was Bucky. Crosby walked around the table and sat in the empty chair between Blake and Doug. Bubbles nodded to the other members of Group Ops as he took his place beside them, across the table from Crosby.
“Glad you could finally join us, Lieutenant. Captain,” Harding addressed the pair.
“Sorry, Sir,” Bubbles spoke politely, stepping forward to place a document in front of him. “Lieutenant Crosby needed to be taken to the hospital to get checked out.”
“Lieutenant?” Harding turned to Crosby, who currently had his nose in his briefcase as he pulled out his logs and maps.
“Uh, yes, Sir,” Crosby confirmed. “Just a concussion, Sir.”
“We were just talkin’ ‘bout how you and Forky missed your calling to the Red Cross,” Doug grinned, tipping back in his chair back. His hand was wrapped in a bandage and his face was bruised but he looked to be in good spirits. Crosby was sure he didn’t look any better.
“I just did what Forky told me to,” Crosby protested. He flipped open his log book and shuffled through some maps.
Douglass ignored him, instead launching into his retelling of events. “Picture this, Croz is holding Charlie’s hands and smooth talkin’ him while he’s sitting on McClelland’s chest to keep the kid from climbing back in the ball,” Dougie boasted to all the flyboys around them. “All the while Forky is packing Charlie with our open parachutes and thawing a syringe of morphine in his mouth.”
“Let’s back up a bit now that we have the navigator’s logs,” the Colonel interrupted. “Try your best to remember what happened. Crosby, I hope your logs are as detailed as I hear.” Crosby’s head shot up, face taking on a red tint. He looked briefly from Harding to Bubbles and then back down to the logs in front of him.
“They will be, Sir,” Forky assured, smiling at the navigator. Blake nodded in agreement, resting an arm on the back of Crosby’s chair.
“Of course. Now let’s start from the top…”
☁️☁️☁️🔥✈️🔥☁️☁️🛬💥🌳
“... and then Croz starts talking about lamps…”
“Yeah! What was it he said? Two lamps or one?”
“By land, or by sea,” Forky added. Bubbles snorted, shaking his head as he suppressed a laugh. The others looked at him in confusion.
“Wait, was that supposed to be a joke, Croz?”
“Maybe?” the navigator admitted, not sounding too sure of himself.
“Paul Revere,” Bubbles inputs. There was no response and everyone shrugged. “Ya know...the British are coming?”
A chorus of ‘ooohhhhhhh’s broke out amongst the group.
“Yeah, well these are the Germans and they came at us by air so make that three lamps,” Blake interrupted.
☁️☁️☁️🔥✈️🔥☁️☁️🛬💥🌳
“Up ahead we spotted another Fort with some Messerschmitts smelling around.”
“They were playing with them,” Doug grimaced in disgust.
“No chutes. Unable to ID,” Crosby added.
“Yeah, then they turn to us and the Luftwaffe, they just don’t stop coming but we took care of them.”
“That’s what happens when you have dead-eye gunners,” Crosby smiled at the man next to him. Doug leaned over and bumped shoulders with him.
“How many do you have noted in total?”
Crosby ran a finger down the page as he read the columns of his notes. He flipped to the next page. “I’ve got two for Via; two for Doug; two for Mac; two-no three for Thorny; one for Yevich and one for Nord.”
“That’s what, eleven?”
“Yes, sir. I have the IDs where observed in my logs,” Crosby confirmed.
Someone let out a low whistle.
☁️☁️☁️🔥✈️🔥☁️☁️🛬💥🌳
Crosby kept his head down as he quietly gathered his papers. Bucky’s footsteps echoed thunderously in the near-empty room, punctuated by the slamming of the front door.
“Don’t worry about him, Croz,” Kidd spoke softly, squeezing his shoulder.
“I should have paid closer attention,” Crosby shook his head.
“You did everything you could,” Blakely reassured him, lighting a cigarette. “There was so much solid flak, you could almost slice it like cake.”
“And I’m not sure there was anything you could have said that would give him the closure he’s looking for,” Douglass put a hand on his shoulder and stood. “Now, come on, I’m starving.”
#for context: Charlie Via’s entire lower half was crushed and Saunders had a 3in stomach wound and McClelland had half of his face scalped#and maybe if i hold you now#fanfiction#continuation of sorts? basically I just wrote this and have no where to put it#but I love it too much to let it sit in the doc#just a snappin’#Blakely’s crew#Harry Crosby#joseph bubbles payne#bubbles payne#everett blakely#james douglass#Charles Via#Jack Kidd#scraps#42 3393#42 3393 just a snappin'#mota musings#mota#Edmund forkner#John Jack Kidd#William McClelland
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what’s the secret project you posted 👀
oh gosh i keep meaning to answer this and then i keep forgetting or pushing it back for reasons unknown to me i think im just unaccustomed to having any asks lol but anyways this is something that actually started because of a certain thing me and marina yell about when it comes to austin and then as our love for callum grew it came to something else grand and beautiful. now it’s only something that has been discussed in the chat, it has no doc or nothing official to it, it may never even come to fruition (marina is already gifting us with so much goodness in the fic worlds she dabbles in)
but i will share some of it and feel free to come further talk about it if it interests you 😘
Warnings: nsfw below the cut, open relationship, threesome, guy x guy, guy x guy x girl
So we’re all aware of how Austin put his blood, sweat, tears, and soul into his Elvis role. This man gave it his all and I’m truly so grateful to him for it because in my opinion (and most importantly in Lisa Marie’s opinion) he did Elvis Presley justice.
• Bree is a famous and highly esteemed guitarist, singer, and lyricist. She’s won multiple Grammies and written for and with Lana Del Rey, Arctic Monkeys, etc., that’s more her vibe. Baz hires her on during the making of Elvis movie so she could help him modernize the soundtrack and help with the choosing of songs. Maybe she’s even there when Austin gathers all the people from the record label and has them ridicule Austin after his first run through.
• But she’s there before filming and she’s there during filming and her and Austin even shack up together for a while during the first COVID lockdown, spending time with him in his apartment and staying up at all hours of the night to help him get certain scenes right. The bed sheets are tangled, kisses are shared, breakfast is eaten in bed not in the kitchen and there are multiple walks on the beach taken together.
• Bree tries her best to be there for him through all of it. She can sense he’s about to sky rocket and rightfully so, she doesn’t think anyone around can currently measure for his talent. She tries to be a soundboard and a friend and a girlfriend of sorts and a co worker and he’s got her playing all these different roles to keep up with him but keep in mind he never asked her to do any of that. She’s doing it because she loves him, maybe she isn’t in love with him or if she is she isn’t aware of it yet but she does love and care for him.
• And he’s going through his shit. He isn’t sure where Austin begins and Elvis ends and he isn’t in the headspace for a relationship, especially with Bree who deserves the world so when he’s sick as a dog and bed ridden before heading to London he makes sure to have the conversation with her. They were never official. Never went public or had rumors swirl. It’s better to end it on a good note and leave it how it is.
• So consider his surprise when a few months into filming MOTA, Bree shows up on Callum’s arm being introduced as his girlfriend. It’s supposed to be a lads night and Barry dragged him out and now someone who he calls one of his closest friends is introducing Bree as his current girlfriend. A close friend who he goes on walks in the parks with, who places kisses on his cheek after a few drinks, who places his hand on the small of Austin’s back when he approaches him, who pinches his cheeks and welcomed him with open arms. Dating someone who was there at his worst and gave him her heart and stayed up entire nights talking him down when his anxiety was too high and made him do self care when he forgot he was supposed to be his own person.
• and see, Callum and Bree are both Brits so they run in semi same circles and they knew of each other and were friends but Callum was with Vanessa Kirby and they were in love and for a while Bree was with Alex Turner and them afterwards there was Austin. So Callum and Bree were already friends and when they run into each other at a record shop and then head to lunch after and maybe Callum gave her a kiss goodbye when they went separate ways - it all just grew from there.
• so maybe Austin feels a green jealous monster growing inside his chest but who he’s jealous of he’s unsure and a larger part of him is actually happy for both of them. They’re good people, they love each other and both deserve each other.
• they’re suddenly everywhere. She accompanies Callum on set and it’s clear to everyone how in love they are and one time when they’re filming the POW scenes and everyone’s on lunch Austin is looking for peace and quiet so he wanders into their “bunks” but there right in front of him - Callum holding Bree up against the wood panel walls, pounding into her as she moans his name so prettily, his sheepskin jacket still on and making him sweaty. Callum’s eyes open and he catches Austin walking, Austin who trips over his own feet to back away but Callum just smiles and winks at him.
• and later Callum approaches Austin with a high five and a cheeky, “see how good I was giving it to her, mate?”
• and fuck, Austin gets hard thinking about it. Gets hard thinking about Bree’s moans and Callum’s grunt and his sweat and her breasts bouncing against his chest.
• then filming wraps and Austin’s free of them. Doesn’t have to be in there presence every day anymore and he meets someone, a nepo baby who’s beautiful and kind and he’s in a place where he feels he can be with someone so he goes for it and he falls in love.
• and MOTA press isn’t until 2024 so it’s two years of only a handful of run ins with them but then press starts and news break: Callum and Bree are engaged. And the entire cast and crew are happy and they all celebrate.
• She didn’t join Elvis press because she was touring.
• so now Austin is around his engaged friends and he has mixed feelings regarding both of them. See he’s happy and he loves his girlfriend and his career is good but if he’s being honest something is missing and when he wants to torture himself he admits he knows exactly what it is. And he’s doing interviews and Bree is backstage and Callum’s always so touchy and so kind in his words in regard to Austin and one day Callum admits Bree told him what went down between Bree and Austin and Callum’s a confident guy, he assures Austin it’s all fine.
• But maybe it’s the first screening of MOTA, and Callum and Bree are tired of Austin’s sad puppy dog eyes every time they catch him watching them so Bree corners Austin backstage. Gets close and starts palming him through his pants, assuring him Callum wouldn’t mind, in fact Callum has been purposely teasing Austin during interviews trying to get him to cave.
• Callum and Bree both decided if they all wanted it how could it be wrong? Why not go for it?
• And Bree’s falling to her knees and taking Austin in her mouth, pretty pouty lips wrapped around him as she takes him all the way in and suddenly Callum is there, watching them, talking her through it.
• “Isn’t she phenomenal, mate? Had to work with her to get rid of that gag reflex and now she can deep throat me.”
• and Callum waits until Austin mewls his name and calls him over, begging him to be a part of this somehow, to please hold him. So Callum is joining them, Bree so pretty on her knees between them and Callum is flicking Austin’s nipple and letting Austin let his moans out in his neck.
That’s all we have more to come soon if ya’ll wish 🌚
• oh yeah there’s a scene where Bree holds Austin’s hand the first time Callum fucks him because she’s aware of the pain of how large Callum is.
@precious-little-scoundrel
#callum turner#austin butler#callum x austin#callum turner fanfiction#austin butler fanfiction#callum turner fanfic#austin butler fanfic#callum turner smut#austin butler smut#*made by me#return to sender 💌#blurbs#austin x callum#mota fanfic#callum turner x reader#austin butler x reader#callum turner x austin butler#illicit affairs 💫
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The Major and the Nurse (1): Rosie Rosenthal x OC
A/N: Rosie/OC… literally couldn’t resist. I was torn between this OC and a Red Cross OC from the flak house, but I think I wanted someone who would see him during all the hard parts, not just for a week when he’s Suffering. Spoilers for eps 5 and 6 of MoTA.
one - adjustment period.
Grace watches warily as the crew approaches on the jeep - she’s not sure what she expected… for them to be jubilant and laughing, looking refreshed and ready for action? Nervous, scared, resigned… some combination of the two?
Her eyes land on Rosie, as they’re prone to do. He seems calm. That’s not a surprise, but the glimpse of something — fear? hesitation? — in his eyes is.
Helen, standing on her left, shifts her weight, her posture the picture of worry and sadness.
“Try to pull yourself upright,” Grace says quietly.
"I'm trying--" Helen says, her voice dull. To her credit, she flashes a smile as the guys get closer, her frown softening.
"Ladies," Rosie says, fingers on the brim of his hat. "What's the welcome wagon for?"
"Coffee." Helen says, "Just brewed."
He smiles thankfully at her, but his eyes go back to Grace's. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, Lieutenant Fleming--"
"Bearer of semi-bad news, I'm afraid." Grace says, ignoring the way her heart picks up a little at his half smile. She rushes to finish before she can see his face transform - he can't afford any more bad news. "Doc wants to see everyone, just a quick chat. After that there's food in the mess."
He nods. "What's one more doctor?" He mutters. She suspects she wasn't supposed to hear that. Then, louder, "You heard her, gents. Doctor's orders."
They grumble a little, but head into the infirmary behind Grace and Helen, taking a cup of coffee each as they go. Helen follows behind, empty tray tucked under her arm. She looks back at Grace, but Rosie is lingering behind, twisting the brim of his cap in his hands, and Grace can't bring herself to leave him out here alone.
She waves Helen on, telling her she'll catch up in a minute.
“Captain?”
He starts, like he forgot she was there. He also looks like he’s forgotten about his promotion. And that’s the thing with flying — a promotion isn’t always wanted. Deserved, certainly. But it often comes at the expense of other pilots, and it’s always a tough pill to swallow. “How’s it been? How’s— everyone?” He asks her. His face is so earnest. It makes her throat tight.
“As well as we can be, Captain. Most of the replacements are here.” She hesitates before continuing. She’s been here right along, with the Red Cross girls and the doctor and the other nurses. But just because she’s been here as long as everyone else doesn’t mean she understands what the flight crews have gone through. “How was your week off?”
“Too long.” He says, no hesitation. His smile is small, wry, a barely-there upturn of his lips. “I wanted to get back.”
“And you’re alright?” The question comes out almost without her permission. They don’t even know each other that well - she’s patched up a few of his scrapes and bruises and they’ve made idle conversation as he checked on some of his crew that ended up in the infirmary, but this is bordering on too casual.
But she’d argued with him, the day before he went on leave. She’d been too casual then, too, and so had he, both of them lost in the emotions of the Munster mission.
It feels a little awkward now, but she does her best to press on.
She can’t help but worry about him. She admires him, at the heart of it. The way he kept his men together through it all, the way he always has a kind word and a joke for anyone who needs it.
She just hopes he’d say so if he’s the one who needs it, this time.
“I’m as good as I can be, Lieutenant.” He replies.
“Grace.” She reminds him softly. “It’s— you don’t have to call me Lieutenant.”
“Grace, then.” He echos. “I’m okay. Have to be. For them.”
“I hope—“ she pauses, looking down at her shoes. “Forgive me sir, but I hope you know that we’re all here for you. What you went through—“
“I know.” He interrupts her, not unkindly. “You think we haven’t seen the way you’ve been there for us? Even when you thought we didn’t notice?” He shakes his head. “You write our letters when our hands shake, and get us extra blankets, and tell us it’s going to be okay when it’s—“ He stops himself, shaking his head.
When his eyes meet hers, they’re so soft she can barely stand it. This is dangerous, what this conversation is turning into, but she’s also relieved to hear that what she’s been doing besides being a nurse and keeping them alive has made a difference.
“I appreciate it more than I can put into words, Grace.” His voice is rough.
There’s a long moment of prolonged eye contact. Her senses are screaming, danger, danger! But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t look away.
“You just keep yourself and those boys alive, Captain.” She says, her voice thick. “For the rest of us.”
He salutes, a jaunty thing that lightens the mood. “Yes ma’am.”
She laughs, and he grins at her in response. “Go on, you have to meet with the Doctor too. Just standard procedure.”
He hums. “Heard a lot of that the last week.” He takes a few steps away and then stops, “Grace?” His face is suddenly boyish, shy. “You’d better call me Rosie. Or at least by my first name.”
It feels right — she’s given up calling anyone else by their rank anymore. They’ve been through too much for that. The new guys will be an adjustment - she’s not sure she can manage getting attached to any of them. Because it’s inevitable, what happens after.
But the line has already been crossed with this man, looking at her in the fading sunlight.
“You got it, Rosie.”
His answering smile stays with her until the next day, long after the roar of B-17s fades into the distance.
#rosie rosenthal x oc#masters of the air fic#mota fanfiction#i am…. going crazy???!#he’s got a hold on me guys it can’t be ignored anymore#please welcome grace fleming#softspeirs mota fanfiction#oc: grace fleming
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yall can’t fall off yetttt I still have MOTA works in my doc 😭
#saturnville#mota#masters of the air#mota fanfic#john egan x reader#major john egan x black!reader#gale cleven x reader#major gale cleven x black reader
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Maggie Reid
Mechanic / Woman’s Auxiliary Air Force (RAF)
Rank: Sergeant
DOB: 16th July 1921, Poole, Dorset, England
Previously Stationed: RAF Duxford, Cambridge
Paired with Harry Crosby / Ken Lemmons
Maggie was born and bred in Dorset, England. She is as Women’s Auxiliary Air Force mechanic for the Lancaster Bombers who share Thorpe Abbott airbase with the 100th Bomb Group. Maggie’s best friend (and Julian’s OC) , RAF pilot Archie Sullivan decides to play match maker between his friend and a certain navigator and ground crew member. The only problem is he keeps switching teams between Harry Crosby and Ken Lemmons and makes Maggie’s decision twice as difficult.
I will hopefully be posting some more about one of my favourite OCs soon but I just had to introduce her to you guys because this collab means the world to me. I can’t help myself keep making ocs so I guess it’s time to introduce Margret ‘Maggie’ Reid. She is my semi new mota oc who I have been loving caring for in my docs for a little while now for my collab with my bestie @georgieluz.
Playlist
MOTA Tags: @georgieluz @docroesmorphine @major-mads @violetdaze25 @bcofl0ve @precious-little-scoundrel @blurredcolour @artlover8992 @b00ks1ut @xxluckystrike @hockeyboysarehot
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WIP teaser
I got myself a lovely little request over a week ago for a Nurse!xBuck fic. Well, hi, it’s me, can’t not take that and run with it straight off the edge of the known world. I don’t even have a fixed name for it yet but I’ve been enjoying AU-ing our familiar faves to death with it
MOTA Pacific Theatre AU: yeah, you heard that right. Maybe it’s the anniversary of Iwo Jima currently happening or maybe it’s my ongoing crush on Ensign Jane Kendeigh, or -more likely- my subconscious awareness that nurse OC’s are a pretty favorited bunch for fandom writers, so I’ve found myself mixing it up entirely.
We’ve got Navy Flight Nurses and we’ve got Lt. Commander Doc Egan and co-pilots Cleven and Demarco who aren’t too fond of having to fly cargo planes full of wounded out of war zones all due to flight surgeon John Egan’s special request to have Cleven chauffeur him around. Oh yeah, and somehere in here there’s a developing thing between Cleven x oc Nurse!Ensign Maureen Kendeigh
TW: blood? Use of the word “Jap”
…
“You got it, commander.”
More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his station, then past it to poke her head between the pilots’ seats.
“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”
“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.
“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.
A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”
“How bad?”
“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted, she hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.
Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a bloodied toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.
“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.
“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.
“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.
“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.
“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.
“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”
“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.
“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”
Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”
“I know sir.”
“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”
“Thank you, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.
“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.
#wip#those who can#mota#masters of the air#Gale Cleven#mota AU#Buck Cleven#Austin butler#Austin butler fanfiction#mota fanfic#gale cleven x reader#john egan
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Top five hbo war (and mota) characters?
omg!!
ray person - comedic relief until he's not. my fav trope <3
doc bryan - must i even speak
malarkey - for similar reasons as ray. would they be friends? hmm
lena riggi - "no i dont hear that very often." "actually he never signed the papers." GOD
the entire h company peaches gang (leckie runner chuckler hoos sid) I just love how the show ended with all of them completely healthy happy and together! :)
bonus bc it feels wrong not including mota: BUCKYYY
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This is kinda random but on the topic of Buck and Bucky being roommates: I'm re-reading the MOTA book after watching the show and it says that in the stalag, the officers usually got to room in 2 or 4 bed cabins. And Buck and Bucky were 1) said to be one of the US colonel's highest rated officers among the other prisoners and 2) explicitly mentioned as being roommates...
I was kinda mad the show made put them in the room with everybody else but i get it for the cameraderie etc. in the TV show. Irl, i think they were among themselves.
YES i've seen stuff about this too!!! i have yet to read the book (waiting to read it chapter by chapter w my bestie lol) but i read something about this in an article and ykw ever since then it's been canon in my head.
i've looked at pictures of what the cabins looked like too (literally the places writing mota fanfic takes you) and most of them really did only have 2 or 4 beds and were tiny, but like you said i totally get the purpose of having a bunch of them in one room in the show both for plot and camaraderie. it was really a joy (amongst all the horrors) getting to see all of them interact and grow closer, as nice as it would've been for us lil gays to get more writing fuel lol. <3
but once the google docs open... they are roommates. (◠‿◠✿)
(this article was an interesting read on stalag conditions with some good pics of what things would've looked like, for anyone curious/needing info for fic writing)
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Little Sunshine Fires: Chapter 2
Pairing: Benny DeMarco x OC [Marnie Cleven]
ch. before //ch. after
Synopsis: Marnie requests a transfer to the 100th Bomb Group to stay close to her boxed in, reserved pilot of a brother, Buck Cleven. It's the last thing she expects, when she starts to anticipate another man's return to safety from the skies, nearly just as much.
Warnings: historical inaccuracies + this is only based on the MOTA characters, and not the real life veterans!
Ps. the photos do not belong to me. :)
To write a love story in the middle of rapid conflict has always been complicated.
That’s just how the world works–trying to seek small bouts of happiness through torrential rains means sinking your boots deep into wet soil. But Benny is persistent, and he’s willing to climb through the muck because the reign of dawn has always been more than worth it. Daylight, for him, is a soothing balm even through the most turbulent of storms. Although, waking up to thoughts of a certain nurse tends to feel like daylight before he even pulls the curtains open.
He supposes he understands Marnie's qualms with the sun. But still, when this is all over, he’s determined to take her for a swing in his plane, and show her how beautiful the world is when you’re looking at it from the clouds. Perhaps, it may be an agenda more for him, than for her though. To fly with someone as gorgeous a soul as Marnie is as close to heaven as he will probably get, alive.
For now though, that’s thinking too far ahead. Benny realizes quite quickly that it’s near impossible to take a girl out on a date when you're dead stuck in a war.
⋆ ˚。⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚。⋆
He ran into her once at the theater. It seems the rest of the men had the same idea, finding his co-pilot Thayer and Lieutenant Curtis Biddick there as well, no doubt in need of a reprieve after the hell of a mission they had returned from. Five forts lost, more than twenty returning men injured, their bombing scrapped, and efforts wasted. The hospital lights didn’t dim for nearly two days, and though Benny was dying to burst through the doors to see if Marnie was okay, Buck said she’d yell in his face to scamper off before he could even say hello.
“One for the dramatics?” He had asked her, falling into the empty seat by her side. She chuckled then, but it didn’t quite meet her eyes, and he could clearly see the bags that dragged them down. But by God, in the lights of the film, she still glowed like daylight against clear water. “You could say that, but Buck’s the bigger drama queen between us two.” She cracks a teasing smile. “He just knows how to hide it better, yknow?” He didn’t know if he believed her, but she swatted at his shoulder when he had expressed the thought, so he guessed he better have.
They settled comfortably into silence then. The dark room was chilly, only lit with Bette Davis dancing about in colors of gray. Sounds of the soldiers wolf whistling, and chattering, and shushing those who were too rowdy set the tension in their shoulders loose. Benny saw the way the fingers on her right hand fiddled with each other, restless against the arm rest, and he was about to do something reckless, slip his hand into the shape of hers.
But he was so rudely cut off, by the blaring red light signaling a new mission.
⋆ ˚。⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚。⋆
He ran into her again a few days ago, while she searched for Buck in the mess hall at lunch. It was clear she was distressed, claiming she sought her brother to listen to her whine about Doc Stover’s never ending demands, and he decided there, and then, that to dissolve the weight of bricks on her back, he would whisk her away for a simple dinner (perhaps, a dinner date).
“With me? Make it a date?” She points to herself comically, and Benny lets a little smirk curve on his lips. “Yes, you. Dinner with me.” “With you?” “Yes, Christ. With me?” There was a tremble in his bones at that point, because maybe he was taking his chances too far. But, when she opened her mouth to speak–and he thought she'd throw a wrench into his resolve–she crumbled midway into laughter, eyes twinkling with mirth and a smile that made him warm.
“I’m just messin’,” she beamed, and relief fills his lungs, “I would love to have dinner with you, Benny. Tonight, at 5?” He nodded then, shrinking a little at the way Buck, who was seated a few tables away looked upon them in confusion, his utensils paused mid-air. Bucky turned around then, throwing Benny a smirk and a thumbs up before Buck smacked the back of his head. “At five. See ya, sweetheart.”
Come 1600, he was pleasantly surprised to find her knocking on his door an hour early. But as he took in her physical state, hair drooping from its messy bun, and blood stains on her white nurse uniform, he surmises that she was not there out of eagerness, and hides the wilt in his eyes when she informs him that she’ll have to cancel.
“One of the patients went into hysterics. Accidentally sliced one of my nurse’s hands in panic and left a pretty lookin’ gash. Doc Stover thinks it’d be best, that I stay for the night,” Marnie sighed, the guilt pooling in her sagged form. “I’m really sorry Benny.”
“Wait but,” he said, alarmed that she may be alone with in a hazardous situation, “will you be okay, alone? I could stay with you. That’s…it’s concerning, to say the least.”
“It’s all part of the job, I’ve been trained hard for shit like this,” she responded, letting a tired smile grace her lips. “Appreciate the thought though, but he’ll be a fine patient once he settles down.”
He nodded in understanding, but remained still at his door frame as if it’d keep her from turning away. Daylight, today, sent a trickle of sweat down his temples as if to mock the pinch of serenity he was declined of. But instead of turning away, she snatched the sun in her hands and sent heat straight through his blood and into his head when she stood on her tippy toes and planted a soft, sweet kiss on his cheeks. Her hands were gripping lightly at his shoulders, though if she were to let go, he might have been the one to topple over instead. “But I promise, I want that dinner with you.”
⋆ ˚。⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚。⋆
If they couldn’t meet in person, he would have to continue showing his affection through his actions.
It was routine for Benny, either on a Saturday or a Sunday, whichever he wasn’t bogged down on a mission with, to head out to the local florist. Ever since he knew of Marnie's gravitation towards peonies, he’s made a point to leave a new bundle on her desk as a way to say that he’s thinking of her. It’s gotten to the point where he has made friends with Grandma Daisy who runs the shops, a cheery old lady. He kisses the back of her hand in greeting each time he comes. After Benny’s first two visits, when the bell rings of his presence, she’d dash to the back room and return immediately with a bouquet of peonies (sometimes she’ll sneak in a couple extra than what he paid for).
And he starts leaving messages for Marnie on the pink-heart shaped card Grandma Daisy slips in for free. Sometimes it’d be something romantic, like “the morning sun is my favorite time of day, but the golden glow has got nothing on the way you shine.” Other times, he’d leave questions for her to ponder, even though he never expects an answer. Just yesterday, he had snuck in another bouquet on her desk in the hospital, before the night shift nurses clocked out before the sunrise, with a question written on the card. “When I take you for dinner, what would be your choice of food?”
He’s pleasantly surprised to return to his cot, worn out on a dreary Monday after a practice mission, to find a box with his name written widely across, sitting by the door. A box of lemon-drizzled vanilla cupcakes, and a small floral card with no name, but a little note. “Honestly, corn fritters and corn dogs, but perhaps that is not classy of me at all.”
He pays no mind to the gloomy clouds, because he feels like he’s got the wonders of the world sitting right here in his hands.
⋆ ˚。⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚。⋆
Crumple all fate in his grip; he will build a destiny for himself.
They are living on borrowed time, the numbers of the 100th Bomb Group dwindling with each mission they set off to in the day. And perhaps, this should have deterred him. Bucky would say, what is the point of growing seeds when you fly, knowing that the wheels of your plane may never touch the grass again. But that is not how Benny sees it. If anything, the fickleness of it all is the reason he should not hesitate.
So despite entering the pub with Buck, and Bucky, and Kidd and whoever else–he was barely paying attention, ever since Buck mentioned Marnie would be there–he beelines straight for her, seated on a wooden chair by the speckles of the lit fireplace. It seems she’s clocked him beforehand, greeting him as he approaches without even turning her head to meet his eyes, staring aimlessly into the fire. He wonders what constantly plagues her thoughts. Each time he runs into her, it seems he yanks her wandering mind back into her orbs.
“Thought you didn’t like the fire,” he states, and she finally turns to him. With a cute, confused frown, she replies, “when did I say I didn’t like fire?”
He chuckles, pointing to the fireplace, then up. “That big ball in the sky, if you haven’t noticed, is the fire that keeps this earth from turning into a shithole of poop.”
“It’s different,” she remarks as she scrunches her face. He reaches to pinch her nose, but she slaps his hand away, a growing smile betraying one of mock annoyance. “Seeking warmth on a cold, rainy night, then stepping out into glaring daylight.”
Mulling it over in his head, it’s impressive to Benny, the way her simple words are always doused in complex meaning, even when she’s not trying. He quite likes her mind, because it’s as beautiful as the outside. A little thought snaps into his near daze, and he scans the small pub, trying to see if there were other women around. Swiveling his head back to her, he notices the only chair in her periphery has been left unused.
“You’re alone?” He asks, moving to sit down, scuffing the chair forward against the wooden tiles to be closer to her side. “Didn’t come here with your friends?”
She nods, “I did, Shonda and Betsy. But they’re busy with some officers, right about there.”
He pans to where she points her finger, a blonde with short, tamed curls (Betsy, she tells him) and a long-haired brunette (Shonda, that’ll be), the girls talking chipperly to a couple officers by the bar that, to Benny’s dismay, were donning navy blue. A grimace pulls on his lips, and she laughs gingerly, knowing exactly why. The RAF officers never bode well with the Americans flooding in to fight on their behalf.
“Can’t complain though,” Marnie says, “they’re quite charming if you let them try, and they polish up real nice.” It may have been steam, rushing from his ears then, and all he wants to do is smack the smugness off her face, a delightful snicker bubbling from her throat in her easy dig to rile him up. He slips a cigarette out of his pocket, and in seeing him do so, she pulls a lighter from her own. Moving closer to Benny, she flickers a small flame against its bud as it sits between his mouth, and he nods his thanks. “Can I have one?”
“Nope,” he deadpans, sour towards her eye for navy-clad men. She pulls her head back slightly, a tiny pout on her lips. “Ah, ah, ah,” he mocks, pulling his hand back as she throws herself forward, trying to snatch precious cargo from the cardboard box. An idea springs into his mind, drawing a smirk of mischief to his lips. Benny holds the cigarette box further back, out of her reach, and Marnie, ever so the lioness prances even farther against his chair, eager for a puff of nicotine. “Benny–”
But her words die in her throat, eyes flickering up and down between Benny’s eyes and his lips, because oh my, she didn’t realize at all how close their faces were. And Benny, ever so the plotter, raises his brows in mock question, his own eyes trailing down to Marnie’s lips like he had his answer found.
“British men don’t knock into ya with their bike, and use repayment as an excuse to try and see your pretty face everyday, do they?” He teases, the smirk falling off his lips as heat sends her pupils dilating.
“It was my fault though, wasn’t it? If you’re asking for favors, I’d be happy to comply,” she says, and he can feel the flames burn through his lungs, and fume into his hands with the way they yearn to grab her waist. But he flares restraint against his muscles, because one, noisy Curtis Biddick stalks up to them with no shame. Benny can’t judge him though, considering how he was about to kiss his major’s little sister senseless in the middle of a very public pub.
“Damn Benny,” Curt gleams with a teasing lilt to his voice, and slides in between them like a wall to keep them separate, Bucky and Buck trailing closely behind. The latter stared intensely at his little sister, like a quiet reprimand, but she merely shrugs with a clandestine smile. “You stuck a hole in the wheel of your bike so you could trap her through your miserable fall in your big, cozy arms?”
Now that, sends a flush of embarrassment down his neck. He leans back in his chair flustered when his partner in crime simply cackles at his discomfort. The men start gathering around a long, wooden table a few meters away from their spot by the fireplace, but Marnie makes no point to move, so he doesn’t either. Besides, he sees these people everyday, toeing life and death, ‘til their head hits the pillow, should they be lucky. He doesn’t need their company day in, day out. Marnie waves at Betsy and Shonda, her friends (that Benny will forever remember were fraternizing with the enemy) sitting down to join the wolf pack of rowdy men.
“You babble at us for ditching our friends, Mar, and now you’re doing the same,” Betsy says, shaking her head in a joking manner, her voice traversing across the room. “Disappointed at your lack of loyalty.”
“And for a pilot no less,” Shonda adds, “didn’t you say they had their heads too far up their ass, and you weren’t about to be the one to pull ‘em out?” The boys, Bucky and Curt and Veal, play into Betsy and Shonda’s jabs, clawing at their hearts and groaning at her shots. Benny watches as Marnie simply rolls her eyes, clearly used to their form of teasing.
The chatter in the room resembles a fish market as everyone keeps yapping at their highest volume, causing Benny to flinch ever so slightly. It’s not that he can’t throw himself into a bustling bunch, but that is no delight in comparison to the quiet bliss between him and Marnie. Recalling Shonda’s words, he lets out a scoff, beckoning her attention (not that it ever diverted from his healthy, tan skin and cheeky, boyish smile).
“You don’t like the daylight, you don’t like flying, you’re afraid of heights, you don’t like pilots,” he lists, but his words are light, just teasing at her choices. “You think the RAF shits are charming, the next thing you’re gonna tell me is ya don’t know how to ride a bike.”
Her eyes flee to the ceiling, and she nods at nothing in particular. “Would you be adverse to knowing that I don’t know how to bike?”
“It’s not a bad thing,” he’s quick to clear up. “It’s just always been my favorite thing to do outside and…” He cuts himself off as realization strikes, and he watches her shrink meekly into her seat. “You actually don’t know how to ride a bike.”
“No,” she mumbles, feeling slightly embarrassed, like a child being graded by her teacher.
Confusion hits her mind as he immediately stands up, and for a second she thinks he’s going to stomp away, and for a fucking bike of all things, but he surprises her with an offer of his hand, and kiddish excitement in his deep, chocolate eyes. “I’ll teach you.”
⋆ ˚。⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚。⋆
Apparently the Clevens are not so capable of doing just anything under the sun, or in this case the moonlight. It’s ridiculously amusing to watch Marnie struggle to keep balance on his bicycle, having to catch herself from falling flat on her side by hastily kicking out her feet. Benny just snickers at her lack of cycling abilities, joking that she’s basically destitute. Of course, that earns a kick to his side that has him hunching over in mild pain. “Jesus woman, I was only kidding!”
“I’ve got two left feet but Benny,” she grumbled, clambering off the bike and shoving it into his hands, “I promise you I’m gonna master this thing so well, I’ll bet that I can beat you in a race.”
“Woah, woah, let unrealistic dreams be dreams” he says, pulling the bike by its handles as they stroll through the townhouses, and he swerves to dodge yet another hard punch to his arm. It is quiet in the village, a few families flicking their lights off to retreat to their beds. “So, I know a lot of things you don’t like, so what do you actually like? What brings a smile to Marianne Cleven’s face?”
A thought immediately springs in her mind, evidently, with the way her face blossoms into a wide grin. “Baking.” “Baking?” “Yes, cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, pudding, you’d name it.”
“Huh,” he questions, recalling all the times the cooks would send looks of spite her way, and the box of cupcakes mysteriously left on his doorstep. “Is that why they’d catch you sometimes at fuckin’ 0300, like a ghost in the mess kitchen? ‘Cause you were baking?” She rejoices with a nod. Benny shakes his head in disbelief, but a fondness tugs at his lips. “Thank you, by the way, for the cupcakes. Your hands are gifted.”
“It’s the only thing that I can do, over and over again and never get tired of. My Ma…she was the best baker in town, and it was one thing we could do together where we didn’t even have to talk to bond and spend quality time,” she reminisces, “when I get outta this place and go back home, I’m gonna open my bakery and Buck’s pretty face is gonna be on the posters so I get all the customers, and it’s gonna be called Pearl’s Bakery–that’s my Ma’s name.”
He remembers Buck briefly mentioning their mother dying when they were only kids, so he tries not to poke too far, at least not right now.
It’s an endearing sight, the way her hand gestures flail wildly when she chatters about something that ignites a passion. In the silence that falls over them as they stroll through the homely countryside, Benny wonders if there’s anything other than flying that lights a flame in his soul. When she asks the question, he finds himself short of a proper answer.
“What do you wanna do when the war is over?” She asks him.
“To be honest, I have no idea,” he murmurs, brows furrowing as he contemplates his purpose. “I’ve always been a jack of all trades, master of none kinda guy. I could play sports like soccer and football well enough, but was never the best to be a captain. I got good grades in Math and English, but I’m not talented enough to be a mathematician or a writer. I can’t draw for shit, and I can’t sing. So, I don’t know.”
He wonders what he’s been doing with his 25 years of life. Besides flying, it feels like he has nothing to show for himself and the thought sours his mood. Before he enlisted, he had graduated with a business degree and started working at his father’s tailoring business. But if he’s being honest, trying to sell suits and dresses is most certainly not his main calling in life, though his father might have some choice words about that.
“You don’t have to know,” she empathized. “The war has taken away everything we’ve ever known, and we will not return as the same people to our homes. We will have to relearn what it means to live a fulfilling life, and in doing so, we will find out what we are made for.”
His steps progressively come to a halt as she speaks, and he revels in the comfort of her words, like the throw of a warm fuzzy blanket against his skin. Though she may not know how to ride a bike, each word that leaves her thoughts has always been indicative of a woman who has lived, someone who has survived through hardship. He thinks he could be happy, following the direction of her voice for the rest of his life. And just maybe, he could finish off his day by catching wafts of vanilla cupcakes when he picks her up from the bakery every evening. But once again, he’s reaching too far. Perhaps, a dinner first would do, but there’s no denying what already lies embedded in his thoughts, and solely from what he feels.
Stretching a leg to sit himself towards the back of the bicycle seat, balancing it to the right with his foot, he gestures at Marnie to settle right in front of him. “Um,” she hesitates, “will that be safe?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, an easy grin spreading on his lips, “but it’ll be fun.” She rolls her eyes but does not hide her smile, agreeing after a few seconds to take the front half of the seat.
“Here,” he whispers in her ear, moving against her figure to offer some steadiness. “I got you.”
When she sits down, both her legs resting on the left of the bike, he kicks his feet up to the pedals, biting back a laugh as he hears her squeak. It’s really fucking hard to cycle when he's got the weight of two people–and Marnie’s back leaning against his chest, her hair brushing against his lips, and her soft fingers slipping over his on the handle–but he’s taking in the way she lets out chesty fits of laughter through the breeze, and he doesn’t think he’s felt anything more glorious than this.
He cycles them away from the townhouses, and into narrow roads masked by thick trees and hearty bushes. They are mostly shortcuts winding back from the pub to the base. Determination keeps him pedaling despite the way he begins to wheeze through his chest after five minutes. They stop short of the gates, about a hundred meters away, when she begins caressing the back of his hands with her thumb, turning her lips to his ears to tell him to slow down if he’s tired. And he does, because he’s not about to fall into another crash and send both him, and Marnie flat on the ground.
When he stops to catch himself, his lungs are knocked out of his chest completely when she turns her body to face him, instead of hopping off. “That was good,” she says in a hushed tone, as if the swaying trees are listening in on this moment. “That really was fun,” she mutters, even quieter than before, the sound of their combined breathing overwhelming the softness in her tone.
At a loss of what to say, feeling the nerves take over his working mind, he decides to just not think. Benny inches his face closer to Marnie as she does the same, and stops just before her lips, feeling the residue of lipgloss against his own. He looks at her fervently, silently asking for confirmation. At her slight nod, he lets his eyes close and presses his lips against hers, moving slowly and languidly, feeling the way she morphs into him as her hands slide up his neck and to his jaw. He moves one of his hands off the handles, and tangles it in her loose hair, trying to get closer, kissing her like a drowned man clutching at straws to seek air.
But that’s not even the best part. Nothing, to Benny, competes with the astounded look on her face as she lets go for a brief moment. She leans her forehead against his and lightly giggles as he breaks out into his own, goofy grin, with matching dusts of red spreading across their cheeks.
He may be lying about the bike ride–this may be the most glorious thing he’s ever felt instead.
-
a/n: we will delve more into marnie and buck's upbringing and relationship, soon. :) as always, eternally grateful if you have made it this far.
#masters of the air#mota#benny demarco#benny demarco x oc#bernard demarco#benny x marnie <3#mota oc#marnie cleven#late night post#buck cleven
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Hi everyone! 💙 I just wanna do a quick intro post that'll hopefully help you navigate my blog and my works a bit more easily.
As I've been here since 2020, the best space for a deep dive into my stuff is probably my blog archive. You might also catch me on AO3: I have written a fair bit in our fandom, which you can find here. I mainly write fics that focus on canon and/or original characters. Are you interested in learning more about my original characters? Look no further than this Google Doc!
Ongoing writing projects of mine you might catch more info about when you follow me:
The Burning House - a post-war adventure that begins in 1940s Austria and tracks Ron Speirs’s life to 1950s Berlin and beyond.
the earth is run by mothers - a collection of fics for Masters of the Air, mostly centering around an American all-female bomber crew and the people around them. Naturally includes the MotA canon characters we know & love!
the Form & Void AU - features Easy Company and others as people chosen by specific gods.
Are you looking for edits/gifsets instead? Try the tag #basilcreations for all my works orrrr try one of the following:
#bobedit (for everything Band of Brothers)
#thepacificedit (for everything The Pacific)
#generationkilledit (for everything Generation Kill)
#sasrogueheroesedit (for everything SAS Rogue Heroes)
#motaedit (for everything Masters of the Air)
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MASTERLIST
main: @waitingforsols
top gun/mota/aviation: @thatsrightice
band of brothers: doc roe blog coming soon :)
BACKGROUND: I have zero rowing experience or knowledge prior to watching/reading tbitb. I do have a mechanical engineering degree with an aerospace minor, so I know what kind of classes the boys might take theoretically.
WHAT DO I POST ABOUT?
TBITB headcanons, prompts, writing ideas, fanfics I’ll inevitably write, rants, etc.
Quotes and interesting facts and pictures that I find online or in the book
Fanart (sometimes, rarely, I can’t really draw people lol)
FOR YOUR REFERENCE :)
Character Bio Presentation
Created by yours truly! Brief, but fairly thorough background information for each of the boys, specifically highlighting their personalities and relevant background info as described in the book. Here’s an example:
check out more tbitb writing references and my frequent tags below :)
Conibear Shellhouse
Floorplan blueprints, information, and video footage of the Conibear Shellhouse, the current Shellhouse used by the University of Washington Rowing Team (for my modern AU friends)
Coxswain Recordings and Analysis
This webpage by readyallrow.org is a compilation of dozens of videos of practices, head races, sprint races at both the collegiate and junior level, as well as videos from master and elite coxswains. At the end of on the list is a link to a post breaking down and conducting an in depth analysis on the footage.
Rowing Accidents
This is a list of rowing accidents compiled on the RowSafeUSA website. It lists details of rowing accidents in chronological order, and though it might not list every accident in history it is one of the most comprehensive lists I’ve seen.
FREQUENT TAGS
#boys n boats
where you'll find my h/c's, writings, blurbs, musings, rants, prompts, analysis, etc.
#real tbitb
any information or images or facts I come across that are related to the real story, not necessarily the movie
#bobby and his boys
#bobby and don
#coxstroke
#the titles are links btw#resources#fic resources#masterlist#accidents#references#olie likes research#information#research#this will be added to!
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