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wexhappyxfew · 2 months

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I hope I'm not too late, but you know I'm going to request something for Flo and Benny🖤 Maybe 12 from the "It's Spring!" writing prompt list? - @lostloveletters

ah hello battie ( @lostloveletters )!! not late at all! i was BEYOND excited to do some more with Flo and Benny - those two have captured my heart and i'm so so glad they seemed to do the same for you!! please enjoy my take on the prompt you've sent in - and let's just say, despite the happiness of the prompt, my recent emotions of episode 5 seemed to take over and here we are :)

prompt: rolling down the window of the car

featuring: Flo Godfrey and Benny DeMarco

The feeling would always remain cathartic in a way she couldn't entirely describe to anyone close to her.

Watching the B-17s take off in energetic fashion towards the sky, aligning in perfect formation to the morning haze of what the day was to bring, smelling sweet air, feeling the cool breeze, sitting there watching that 'bucket of bolts' as Wink liked to call them, take off into the sky, the small voice in her head saying they'd all come back. That they'd all be okay. Sometimes it was just a white lie to convince her to calm down.

But it was nearly sundown, 17 out of the 18 planes that had taken off had returned, the pilots and their boys were eating well and washing up and enjoying the feeling of standing on solid ground again. And Flo's stress levels had lessened slightly - well, slightly was a loose-leaf term for it. They'd dropped about a percent before Lemmons started yelling about one of the controls for the plane propeller on Brady's fort that had taken more blows than she had bargained for earlier.

"God, just... give it another go!"

Lemmons was yelling from somewhere down in the plane propeller to her left - closer to the first and second engines on the fort. Clearly, flak had done it's horrendous job more than either her or Lemmons cared to admit. Flo, sat in the pilots seat, flicked the metal probe on the switchboard and heard the gutteral and pathetic whir of the propeller trying to start up, but to no avail, stutter to a stop.

"Nothing!" Flo yelled, pulling open the window in the cockpit, "Look, Kenny, I think we gotta jerry-rig it!" Lemmons' faced appeared and her offered her a surprised brow raise.

"Jerry-rig? Who the hell-"

"My father showed me how to do it on a boat one time-"

"A boat?! Listen, Godfrey, that's a boat, this is a plane-"

"Yes! But it should work just the same-"

"Florence Godfrey is that you?" Flo froze about mid-speech, the same turning into samey, which was hardly even a word.

Slowly averting her eyes from the propeller and the sad excuse for engines, she looked down on the ground, past the wings of the fort and found Captain Benny DeMarco standing there, uniform on, tired eyes, a smile on his face, and a slightly bloodied bandage hanging around his neck.

Hanging out the window, looking like an eager, excited dog in front of a Captain was surely not the picture she wished to paint but the sheer surprise that took over her face was equally uncalled for and warranted. Flo could briefly see Lemmons looking up at her with a smirk on his face.

"I-"

"She'll be right down!" Lemmons yelled, the grin on his face widening as her eyes followed, "Go on, get going, I'll jerry-rig this-"

"You were about to argue with me that that was the last thing you wanted to do-"

"I'm jerry-rigging it." he said, then smirked, "Go." Flo smiled at Lemmons before turning her attention back on the Captain stood on the tarmac, that soft smile on his face.

"If this was a car, I'd tell you to get in; I'd roll down the window as kindly as I could, too." she called to him a grin on her face, "You'll have to meet me on the other side though, where I'll make a less-than-stellar exit." She watched Benny laugh at her words and shake his head.

"You could probably give me a run for my money!" he called up to her, before sending her a wink as he disappeared under the plane.

Flo quickly looked down at her clothes, the minute she took to reevaluate herself enough to notice the grease stains, the minor paint job cropping up on the ends of her OD top, and the tear in her shoulder from where her top had gotten caught on a piece of metal bent awkwardly from the plane. Spinning herself around, she moved through the center of the plane before making her, as expected, less-than-stellar exit onto the tarmac, and finding Benny there right in front of her - holding a hand against her head, gray beanie covering flying braids that needed redoing, the slight, night wind brushing her crimson cheeks.

"Didn't think I'd be seeing you tonight," Flo said as she approached him, her eyes darting to the bandage hap-hazardously wrapped around his neck, the red spot lingering lower on the wrap, her smile fading slightly, "are you okay?" He seemed to sense her worry and reached up to gingerly touch the bandage and shook it off, smiling at her as she came closer.

"Just took a bit of shrapnel from a blast up there, nothing to worry about," he said, but she could see the bit of pain that ran over his face as he stood there. She became slightly distracted by the scent of his cologne hitting her nose - the sudden realization that she probably smelled like a greasy, wet rag making her want to crawl into a hole. She looked up at Benny, deep brown eyes soft in the light of the sunset, focused solely on her. He could've gotten himself straight to a warm meal, but instead was stood outside with her - he'd just flown a plane over Germany and back, she'd spoon feed him dinner if it meant it brought him comfort.

"If I'm holding you from your meal, I'm sorry I just-"

"No, no," Benny said quickly, stepping forward, placing his hands on her shoulders, the presence comforting in a way she hadn't felt in months, "no, not at all……I, uh, just….wanted to thank you, for a few nights ago. The dance." A smile broke out on her face and she let out a small laugh and looked up into his eyes again.

"Sometimes with all that's going on around," he looked around at the airfield and then looked back at her again, "just, dancing with you, brought me away from the war for a bit. Never knew how much something like that could mean in the moment until you're standing there….especially with someone like yourself."

"Benny…." she whispered, but his smile softened, as he reached out and gently tucked some of her lose flyaway hairs behind her left ear, his hand warm, thumb lightly brushing against her cold cheek. Her heart stuttered - Benny DeMarco, that look in your eye…..

"I know, I know, it's war. Flying B-17s, you can't exactly go around saying stuff like that, knowing that well…." Benny trailed off his trembling words and looked back at her, a riddled air of confidence and calm filling his eyes in front of her, "life's too short not to say something like that, even with the Germans breathing down our necks. And I'd regret it everyday if I never said it to you. Knowing how much it meant…." to both of us, her mind whispered. She watched him.

Her emotions were suddenly in five different directions, all good directions, she reminded herself - for a moment, her heart pounded and her mind raced, and the reality of war ebbed in and out of her vision. But here was someone, looking at her like he'd lasso the moon for her, in the midst of war, showing up to the plane she was losing her mind over a propeller about, when he very well should be sitting down and eating up, thanking her. And really, she should be thanking him.

Flo stepped closer to him, his light breathing fanning across her face, his cologne still overwhelming her nose, but still oh-so-enjoyable, and his presence warm and inviting and there.

He was right there.

Inches.

And she hugged him, wrapping her arms, careful of the wrap, around his neck, and hugged him wholly. Where she was enveloped by him in every way possible, where for a moment it wasn't the two of them on a tarmac, one having just finished off a mission against the enemy while the other was fixing up the planes for the next, but where it was the two of them, in a different circumstance, a different way. Where war wasn't the backdrop to their emotions that lingered at the borderline. Softly, she shifted her lips to his ear and pressed a soft kiss there.

"Thank you for for everything," she whispered, "because for once, war has shown me that hiding anything I feel will only be regretful in the long-run." Flo slowly pulled back, staring up into Benny's tired eyes, and smiled softly.

"In another world, we're dancing at the Ritz, just you and I and Louis Armstrong above us," she whispered to him, his eyes hazy and soft, like he were imagining a world like that, too, "we're dancing and there's no war. And it's just us." Flo helped him to stand on two feet that day on the tarmac, on the ground. They lost men everyday they went and flew missions - men they trained with, grew with and flew with. Flo was sure of one thing - no matter what transpired above the clouds, she wouldn't lose Benny.

Benny wouldn't ever lose her.

#brb going to go cry now over these two!#thank you for this prompt #definitely took a turn i didn't expect but enjoyed it the entire way through #tackling emotions neither know how to feel but letting themselves feel it anyway #and letting those emotions happen too #yeah my heart #masters of the air #mota #bernard demarco #florence godfrey #flo x benny #these twooooo #+ken lemmons appearance bc he and flo are basically a package deal #those last few lines? yes very purposeful bc 😭#mota writings

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astarlightmonbebe · 8 months

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episode 5 has left me considering the different - and similar - ways taeyoung and kwonsook think about themselves, and how they respond to pain/violence.

kwonsook calls herself a monster, someone who goes crazy in the boxing ring. that monster, she says, was created by her father, and her father used abuse, violence, and emotional manipulation to create that monster. he didn’t treat her like human, so it’s no surprise that the way she talks about herself when she boxes is as if she’s discussing an animal: she gets cornered, gets scared for her life, and lashes out to kill. she calls herself a monster with resignation; it’s not what she wanted to be, but she knows it’s what she was. she ran away to escape that monstrosity, to live as a human, doing good things, but that part of her never really died.

taeyoung, too, calls himself a monster. he’s a SOB, he does thing no one with an ounce of humanity would do. he seemingly has no qualms about what he does, perhaps because he can always justify it to himself, always has an exit prepared for when things really get bad (until, i’m sure, he doesn’t). like kwonsook, taeyoung accepts the label of monster, accepts his own inhumanity, even if they are inhuman in very different ways. whereas kwonsook wants to break away from that monstrous part of her - she’s only returned so she can free herself from that part of herself permanently (and if she finds a way to box without a monster, then...) - taeyoung embraces it. it’s through being a monster that he’s found success, how he secures futures for his athletes, and how he’s able to ‘solve’ their (and his) issues. monstrosity was not imposed on taeyoung, but (due to what we know so far) is something he chose for himself (although the factors surrounding this part of his past are decidedly murky).

in this episode, taeyoung and kwonsook also demonstrate similar responses to violence and (emotional) pain. when taeyoung upsets kwonsook by working with her father behind her back, he offers her an outlet for her anger by punching him. later on, after ahreum has already slapped kwonsook, instead of lashing out, kwonsook offers to let ahreum hit her again if it will make her feel better. in parallel responses, both ahreum and kwonsook debate taking that opportunity to hurt, but decide not to (kwonsook because she’s taking a chance on taeyoung, or moreso giving him another one, and ahreum because she decides that she doesn’t owe kwonsook that, that kwonsook is beneath her in terms of boxing, no longer on her level).

kwonsook learned to respond to pain at a young age. in boxing, you can’t flinch from the hit - you have to learn how to take the pain, absorb it, and get back up to hit again. outside of the rink, kwonsook absorbs the pain, but she doesn’t hit again. she’s experienced firsthand what her hits can do to people, and that terrified her. after all, she only boxed so that she could protect her mother. so when confronted with violence and pain, she takes the hit, because pain is what she knows and understands. it’s the emotions behind it that are hard for her. pain is easy for kwonsook, because she’s used to living through it, surviving it; beneath it, she’s always empty. she’s never really cared about boxing; it was what she had to do. the lee kwonsook that was a boxing genius was a monster she ran from, after all. but in order to break away from that monster, she has to come to understand the emotional investment of her fellow female boxers. before, they were just her opponents, never her friends, but now she has to face their own feelings about the sport, the passion they have for boxing that she never felt. like ara said, she didn’t feel happiness about winning, and kwonsook has never lost, so she’s never had to live with that humiliation, either. how her feelings will change in relation to boxing will likely be a reckoning for her.

taeyoung, on the other hand, is confronting his fair share of non-boxing sanctioned boxing. even though kwonsook is the boxer, it’s taeyoung who’s been touched by ‘true’ violence in this present timeline. his life is quite literally on the line, which has been shown again and again. he’s been ambushed by her father, threatened, blackmailed, and beaten up by chairman nam’s guys. he lives on the edge, anxious at every shadow, which is chewing him alive. to him, kwonsook’s anger is much easier to deal with. he knows she might hurt him, but his potential to hurt her is so much more (and if he does, in that case he’d find her anger justified, and probably let her beat him to death or something if what we’ve seen of his feelings for her is an indication of anything), and she might hurt him, but she’d never hurt him as much as other people in his life at the moment would (i.e. by killing him, or hurting the people he cares about). taeyoung is used to weathering the storm of other people’s dislike; he’s the scumbag, and he does bad things, deserves other people’s anger when it’s directed at him.

both taeyoung and kwonsook want to resolve things through violence. i think it’s telling that despite being two emotionally aware people, they both consider other people’s feelings to be so easily taken care of. they want the quick, instant pain, and then they want to get it over with. because the violence is what they’re used to, and to a degree it’s what they both think they deserve. however, what lies beneath that, what doesn’t go away with a single hit, is much harder for them to confront and understand.

#star stumbles #my lovely boxer #kdrama #my thoughts #in boxing you get hit and you hit someone else and whoever is still standing wins #and it's basically that way in the whole world of (physical) sports #and it's going to be so so good when they both end up embroiled in the very emotional situation that they both want to avoid at all costs #ie their feelings for each other / betrayal / broken trust / fear #i think i ended this poorly i kind of got distracted and honestly...honestly i don't KNOW what their response to violence really says #or how it's going to be played with throughout the drama #this text is the bare bones of what i can understand through what i've seen #and oh yes even though i know some people might argue that they're not emotionally aware i think they are...#both very emotionally mature. despite their actions they both know what's up in their hearts #and they're very adept at reading one another (or at least taeyoung is towards kwonsook i think she's getting there but she's also trying to #distance herself from him so. i do think she's ignoring some of what she'll probably reinterpret later on #nobody made taeyoung a monster he chose that path vs kwonsook left the path as soon as she was able to #and her getting punished for his bad deeds...even though at the end she admits they're both scumbags for going through with this deal #because she's understood that she'll hurt boxing whether good things come out of it or not #because she'll be disrespecting ahreum and everyone else by rigging the match and losing on purpose #which will probably add to her conflict later on #and taeyoung simultaneously struggles with not wanting to string her along vs stringing her along #because he's been upfront with her about how he's a bad person and she sees it too but ALSO #he can't bring himself to tell her some of the worst things because he wants her to see him differently #like he wants to act like a good person for her but also knows he needs her #honestly their relationship dynamic reminds me so much of my liberation notes #it's the ahjussi / disenchanted two people approaching each other and something ending up growing there where they thought nothing would #again

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