#Panel Replacement london | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blurredcolour · 9 months ago

Text

IV. “I Trust You Know What You’re Doing?”

"Trust" Series Masterlist

John "Bucky" Egan x WAC!Female Reader

Struggling with the forced separation of your transfer and promotion, it does not take long for you and Bucky to plan a trip to London together. But even while you're on leave, the world around you continues to do its best to tear itself apart.

Warnings: Language, Grief, Alcohol Consumption, Angst, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Mature/Explicit Themes [oral - f receiving, implied virginity loss, protected vaginal sex, condoms, unprotected vaginal sex, multiple orgasms] - 18+ ONLY.

Author’s Note: Welcome to this massive installment. I have no excuses, only apologies. Also I only had the fortitude to proof this once, there may be more errors than normal, but I didn't want to delay it any longer - I will correct things as I find them. This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal by the actors in the Apple TV+ series. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within.

ETA: The image descriptions for the letters contain the text within to allow for a screen reader or anyone who cannot read cursive. Click the ‘ALT’ button to access.

Word Count: 8497

-------------------------

Wycombe Abbey could not have been more different than Thorpe Abbotts if it had tried.

The private, or in a most confusing twist ‘public’ as the Brits called such institutions, girls’ school had begun its life in the 17th century as a manor house before being transformed into a much grander residence near the end of the 19th century. The school had opened in 1896 with only forty students, but that number had swelled to over two hundred by the time the building was requisitioned for use as the Headquarters of the 8th Air Force.

Stained glass windows, stonework, archways, and wood panelling now replaced squat concrete buildings and rough-and-ready Nissen huts. Though everything was just as drafty, so at least the temperature provided some familiar consistency to your new surroundings. As you descended from your quarters tucked away in some forgotten corner of the attic, down a set of precarious servants’ stairs, you nearly took a wrong turn – again. To your credit you had only been here three days and the maze of corridors and rooms further divided into offices for USAAF purposes was nearly unnavigable.

Chiding yourself softly under your breath that your office was to the right and not the left, as though the sharpness of your tone might really drive it home this time, you quickened your steps still hoping to beat to postal clerk to the outgoing mail box that sat on the corner of your desk. It had been more of a challenge than you were expecting to write the letter clutched in your hand, but the daily meetings that senior operations officers held at 1015, 1600, and 2200 were your responsibility to attend and record via frantically scribbled notes to be typed up in a more professional format later.

These were the meetings at which mission targets for the entire 8th were chosen. The strategic value of various locations was discussed alongside weather reports and aligning with the RAF’s Bomber Command for maximum impact against Nazi Germany. After the first meeting, it would be decided if a mission would even be conducted the following day, and each Division, Wing, and Base involved would be put on alert to allow them time to begin planning the operation. By the time the last meeting ended, the target and approach would be finalized, and the official field orders would be issued.

It made for a remarkably long day, even with breaks for meals, and though you were guaranteed every other Friday off because of this, by the time you crawled into bed near midnight, you only had enough energy to add a few lines onto the letter you had begun to Bucky as soon as you arrived. It made for a rather disjointed and rambling piece of correspondence, in your opinion, but you could not bear to keep him waiting any longer – not wanting him to assume you had forgotten to write and not knowing how long the thing would take to reach him regardless.

Dashing into the office you shared with Myrtle, a very stoic young woman with dark hair and thick eyelashes from Rhode Island, you exhaled in relief to see the post still waiting to be collected and added your letter to the pile. Unlocking your desk drawers, you began setting up for the day, hoping it would reach him quickly.

His reply arrived in your inbox just over two weeks later, near the end of September. Sliding it into your brown leather utility bag, you did your utmost to ignore its very existence throughout the first daily meeting, and your subsequent production of the official report thereof. Taking your lunch break a little earlier than usual paid off in that the line was much shorter at that time. You inhaled the mystery stew and rolls, hardly tasting them, before taking your letter outside to read in the rare afternoon sunshine.

It was short, and it was unspeakably adorable that Bucky did not write in cursive, but there was no lack of his personality in his response. It was as though the very essence of him had been distilled into the ink itself and you could not help the broad grin that bore its way into the muscles of your cheeks, making them ache as you read it.

Glancing quickly at your watch, you realized there was still time to send a reply before the second post pick-up but based on the length of time it had taken for this exchange of letters, it was unlikely another would reach him with enough time to plan for October 8 – your next Friday off. Worrying your lip between your teeth as you considered your options, you landed on a rather devious idea, one that quite honestly would have never come to you if not for the deep need to reach Bucky immediately. Vi had a telephone on her desk in the weather office, a number that you had access to given the strategic importance of weather to the senior operations officers.

Myrtle would be on her break for another fifteen minutes…you had not even realized you had made up your mind before your feet began to carry you back inside, up the stairs into the mercifully still-empty office. Digging out the directory, you found the number for Thorpe Abbotts’ weather office and took a shaky breath as you sank into your chair.

‘Keep it brief, keep it free of classified information. Worst you’ll get is a reprimand.’

The devious, deceptive voice in your mind was a new one, fostered, perhaps, by the rather carefree man you found yourself deeply entangled with, but it was not one you were about to disobey. Lifting the handset of your phone from its cradle, you cleared your throat as the operator answered.

“Norfolk 7315, please.” You tried your best to sound calm and collected as the line clicked and began to ring.

“Phillips.” An unexpected voice answered, and you gulped, knowing Ruth would be less likely to participate in some romantic scheme.

You greeted her in kind, trying to ignore the ache of loneliness as she gasped softly.

“I was hoping you might pass along a message for me?”

“To a certain Major?” You could hear the grin in her voice and felt the pressure on your chest ease.

“Indeed. October 8. I will arrange accommodations.”

“Your line should he need to reach you?”

Hesitating a moment, you ultimately decided to provide it as well, wanting to ensure he could in fact contact you if something came up. Or perhaps any of them could – should the worst happen.

‘Don’t think about that.’ You chastised yourself internally.

“You’re well?” Ruth asked and you smiled softly.

“I am, please tell everyone I miss them terribly.”

“Will do, have to go.”

There was a ‘click’ as she hung up and the line went dead but the lightness in your heart could not be extinguished.

Nine days later you found yourself waiting on the platform at Liverpool Street station awaiting the arrival of Bucky’s train from East Anglia. Given the proximity of High Wycombe to London, you had arrived much earlier that morning and checked into the hotel already, dropping off your small bag and come to wait for his train – well you assumed he’d be on the first train of the day, but as the carriages disgorged a sea of humanity and you had yet to spot him, your brows began to furrow in doubt.

You were about to fish the folded schedule you had picked up from the ticket counter to check the next arrival time when he was suddenly wrapping an arm around you, pulling you tight into his chest as you gasped softly in surprise.

“There you are doll.” Bucky sighed, dropping his bag at your feet to slide the other arm around you as he pulled back to nudge your cap out of the way and deliver a breathtakingly thorough kiss that you were not entirely sure was appropriate for the public setting you were in.

Not that you stopped him, you own arms snaking about his midsection to cling to him tightly.

Pulling back, his eyes raked over your features lovingly as you both inhaled deeply to fill your greedy lungs.

“Well, well 1st Lieutenant.” He smirked proudly as he lifted his hand to stroke the chrome insignia you now wore on your lapels courtesy of your promotion, leaving smudges of his thumb print.

“You are leaving my uniform in disarray, Major.” You chided playfully, unable to hold back you grin, even for a moment, to sell the joke.

His forefinger hooked behind the knot in your tie, tugging it out from beneath your jacket and pulling you closer – eliminating the last few inches of space that remained between your bodies.

“Good.” He rumbled against your lips before kissing you deeply, severely undermining the infrastructure of your knees.

The loud racket of the train cars as they shunted into one another jolted the pair of you apart, making you realize you were among the last few remaining on the platform as the now empty train left the station.

“Let’s get you checked in and your bag dropped off.” You murmured, clearing your throat as you unbuttoned your uniform jacket to straighten and re-secure your tie.

His hand slid into yours as the pair of you made your way out of the station and he happily followed you to a hotel you’d found near his station, knowing that he’d be here longer than you and it would be easier for him to find his way back to base this way. Sitting patiently in the lobby as he checked in and ran his bag up, you smiled as he returned to hold his hands out to you.

“C’mon doll, I have a whole plan.”

Taking his hands, you rose to your feet, raising your eyebrows curiously. “A whole plan?”

He leaned in to murmur against your ear, “you’re not the only one involved in planning you know.”

You pulled back quickly, eyes wide with a touch of panic. You were quite certain you had never told him just what your new position entailed, and there was no way he could simply guess it.

“Easy doll, your phone line.�� He winked as he maneuvered your arm through his, turning to lead you out the front door.

Slowly exhaling, it clicked into place. Of course. Just as you were able to find Vi’s desk number in a directory, it seemed Bucky had been doing a little research of his own.

“Well, shhh.” You chastened him firmly, laying a finger over your lips, looking very much like an anti-slander campaign poster.

His hearty laugh in response did little to convince you that he took in the message.

“Now, how do we get to Hyde Park…” He murmured, pulling a crumpled leave guide out of his pocket.

“The underground.” You answered easily, leading him back towards the very station he had arrived at but this time down to the tube station entrance where the pair of you purchased your tickets.

His touch rarely left you – even if he was forced to release your hand, you could feel his palm pressed against your lower back as you made your way through the crowded subterranean space. You were glad to have him with you this time, not particularly a fan of this mode of transportation, but it certainly was an efficient way to get around London. Pressed close together on the train, you took the opportunity to simply gaze at him, basking in his presence after nearly a month apart, not missing the way his mouth ticked up at the corner cockily.

“Missed you too, doll.” He winked and ducked a kiss to your ear before guiding you off the train at your stop – once he had confirmed with you it was indeed your stop.

Blinking your way back into the light of day, you pointed at a directional sign guiding the way to Hyde Park.

“Perfect, now apparently there are…sandwiches!” He crowed and tugged you over to a sandwich truck that seemed quite popular based on the line of waiting patrons.

Your face was starting to hurt, driving home how infrequently you had found the opportunity to smile in his absence, making you squeeze his hand fondly. Bucky looked back to you quickly as he joined the queue.

“You really did plan everything.” You gulped quickly and he beamed proudly.

“Anything for my girl. What kind would you like?” He gestured at the menu written on the side of the truck.

By the time you reached the front of the line, Bucky was able to easily place your order, including two bottles of lemonade, insisting on paying. Opening your utility bag, you carefully packed the lunch away, earning a rather damp and enthusiastic kiss on your cheek as he snatched your hand to continue onto the park.

“May I ask what it is about this park in particular?” You inquired as the pair of you dashed across the road.

“You can ask…” His cheeky reply had you scoffing in return as you entered the canopy of trees, following a path further and further away from the traffic of downtown London.

Plenty of men in uniform seemed to be out, enjoying the nice weather with women on their arms. Women who, unlike you, enjoyed the luxury of being allowed to dress as they chose during their leisure time. It had been one of many reasons that nearly twenty-five percent of women had chosen not to remain enlisted during the transition from the WAAC to the WAC, the army requirement to remain in uniform even when off-duty. In all honesty, you had not really missed your civilian clothes until just then.

Watching the sheer femininity of those women as they swirled about in their colorful fabrics only drove home how drably olive and plainly cut your uniform truly was.

“You’re a million miles away, doll.” Bucky’s voice cut through the dark clouds that had gathered in your mind and you looked to him quickly.

“Sorry Bucky, it’s beautiful here. Like another place entirely.” You offered him a smile but by the way his eyebrow lifted slightly he did not seem to be entirely buying it. “Have the leaves started changing around the base yet?” You tried changing the subject.

He shook his head, releasing your hand to slide his arm around your waist instead, pulling you closer. “Seems everything will happen later here than back home.”

You hummed thoughtfully, glancing ahead and gasping a little at the glimpse of a sizeable body of water that seemed to be filled with rowboats.

“That’s why were here.”

You turned back to him to see a broad grin had overtaken his face and laughed in excitement as it was terribly romantic.

“If I had known, Major Egan, I would have brought my parasol.” You grinned and he snorted, squeezing your hip fondly.

“No need to put on airs, 1st Lieutenant,” he smirked, “the ride will be enjoyable all the same.”

“Bucky!” You hissed sharply, slapping his chest as he laughed deeply, ducking your head slightly as more than a few passersby shot glances your way.

“C’mon doll.” He chuckled and led you over to the booth beside the dock, paying the fee for a thirty-minute rental before the pair of you headed down to climb into one of the waiting row boats.

Setting your heavy bag on the floor, you carefully stepped into the rather unstable watercraft, settling on the passenger’s bench – denoted as such by the ornate ironwork arms. Bucky followed, seated across from you at the oars, his knees nearly brushing against yours, legs too long for so small a boat. Unbuttoning and sliding off his jacket, he tossed it and his cap to you before rolling up his sleeves and began to row the pair of you out onto The Serpentine, you now knew the small lake to be called.

“I trust you know what you’re doing?” You asked as he appeared to easily manage the oars, seeming at ease in the small boat.

“Mostly.” He teased with a wink before laughing at your slightly aghast expression. “Grew up on the shore of Lake Michigan, doll. Boats are like planes to me, easily managed.” He soothed.

It was difficult to decide which view to settle your eyes upon, the verdant green of the still-lush trees, the throng of boats around you, or Bucky working up a remarkably attractive sheen of sweat with his forearms on display as he propelled the rowboat through the water. A feathered fan would have been a very useful tool in that moment, to hide behind or cool yourself down, or perhaps both.

Belatedly, you realized that Bucky had been speaking this whole time – about events back at Thorpe Abbotts. Giving you the update about the people you knew, the trouble Meatball had caused with a farmer down the road, but he trailed off when he realized you were staring once more in dumbfounded silence at him.

“Doll, you’re going to give me a big head if you keep looking at me like that.” He winked as he lifted the oars from the water, letting the water sluice from the blades before tucking them into the boat on either side of you.

“Y…you’re good at that.” You replied lamely and shook your head. “Hungry?” Leaning forward for your bag, which was in all honestly a lot closer to his feet in the floor of the boat, you froze as everything tilted precariously in response to your movements.

Bucky lay a gentle hand on your shoulder to steady you. “Allow me.” Bending down slowly, he scooped up your bag and opened the flap to retrieve your sandwich and lemonade. “It’s sure tight in here, how did you even make this all fit?”

He tugged a little harder on the packet containing your lunch and your eyes widened in horror as, while he was triumphant, he also managed to send the three condoms you had tucked into your bag scattering to the floor of the boat. His eyes followed the distinct, square, paper packets and you could see his throat bob as he swallowed viciously.

“Doll…” His voice came out rough as a gravel road as he slowly raised his eyes to meet yours. “…been doing some planning of your own?”

“‘A WAC is always prepared.’” You quoted in a mortified whisper, struggling against the urge to lunge forward and hide the evidence, knowing it would only send both of you over the side and into the lake.

You watched another swallow ripple down Bucky’s throat before he offered your lunch to you, carefully collecting the offending items and returning them to your bag before he retrieved his own food.

“Would you mind,” He spoke after taking a rather ruthless and oversized bite of his sandwich, words muffled between slices of bread and chicken salad before he swallowed to start over. “Would you mind if, instead of following the rest of my plan, after these thirty minutes are up, I take you back to the hotel?”

Taking a thick swallow of your own, you shook your head slowly as you felt your cheeks heat up at the implications of that invitation. “I would not mind, no.” You clarified breathlessly and he nodded sharply, gesturing for your as-yet-unopened bottle of lemonade.

Handing it back to him, you watched silently as he lined the edge of the cap with the metal plate holding the oarlock in place, popping it off the bottle with one sharp blow of the heel of his palm.

“Thank you.” You murmured quietly as he passed you the opened drink, taking a deep sip as he repeated the process with his own, draining nearly half the bottle in one go.

Tilting your head back to take in the feel of the sun on your face, you slid your cap from your hair, adding it to the pile of his neatly folded items on the bench beside you, continuing to enjoy your picnic on the lake.

“You heard about Dye hitting twenty-five?” He broke the silence, sounding much more like himself again and you nodded quickly.

“Big news, everywhere in the 8th. Lucky crew all heading home – how did Lil take it?” You tilted your head curiously, raising your bottle to your lips, his eyes following the motion closely.

“Hm? Oh, she’ll be alright…they’re both good at letters.” He nodded, leaning back a little.

You knocked your knee against his affectionately. “Don’t sell yourself short you sweet man, I thoroughly enjoyed yours.”

His eyes flicked to yours quickly as a small smile curled his lips. “Yeah?”

You nodded firmly. “Yeah. Promise to give you more to reply to soon, phone was just necessary to make this happen.”

His hand landed on your thigh gently and he squeezed the flesh through your skirt. “Worth it. Just how long are your days though, doll?”

Your fingers played along the empty glass bottle, and you shrugged. “As long as they need to be.” You replied evasively.

“Mm, I’m going to get a better answer out of you than that.” He threatened playfully as he leaned forward to grasp the oar handles, swinging the blades back into the water and taking the pair of you on a loop around the corner of the lake before returning you to the dock.

Bucky climbed out first, taking his cap and jacket before helping you out easily, kissing you firmly as soon as you were on solid ground. “Let’s take a cab…” He breathed impatiently and you laughed, shaking your head.

“The cost would be astronomical, come on.” You affixed your cap on your head as he rolled down his sleeves and slid his jacket back on before the pair of you made your way back to the Underground.

Bucky’s body was practically pressed against yours the entire trip back to Liverpool Street station, seemingly unable to tolerate any form of separation. As you neared the hotel though, you looked to him slowly. “We should go in as colleagues…I booked us that way.”

He looked at you utterly confused, and you swallowed.

“We’re unwed, there was no way I could book us here together, and they will be none to please if they realize I’ve tricked them. I’ll get my key, you get yours, I’ll come to your room…”

He nodded slowly, arm reluctantly unwinding from around your waist before holding the door open for you to step inside.

“Thank you, Major.” You nodded, sliding your cap from your head as you stepped inside, heading to the counter to fetch your room key as he did the same, the pair of you walking up the stairs to the fifth floor together before parting ways so you could fetch your small overnight bag.

It was rather a waste of money, to book a room knowing you would most likely never sleep in it, but such things were necessary for women like you. Women who chose to go to bed with a man they were not married to in the long light of the afternoon. Taking a steadying breath, you left the perfectly made bed behind, walking down the hall to Bucky’s room and knocking on the door softly.

It promptly swung open to reveal a smiling Bucky, his jacket and cap long gone, along with his necktie, the top few buttons of his shirt undone. He stepped back and gestured for you to enter his much larger room with a small brown paper wrapped packet clasped in his hand. Once the door was closed behind you, you let out the laugh you had been holding.

“I did book this under Major John Egan, I suppose they felt the need to give you a nicer room than a Lieutenant.”

He smirked and kissed your cheek, taking your cap and bag from your hand, then pressing the package into it. “Before I forget, again.”

“Bucky you didn’t have to get me anything, you came to see me…”

“Open it.” His eyes danced with anticipation, and you began to pull at the piece of twine holding the package closed, unfolding the utilitarian paper to reveal a brand-new pair of stockings.

You let out an audible gasp as your jaw fairly fell to the floor.

“To replace the pair that got wrecked when you fell.” He smiled, obviously pleased by your reaction.

“How on earth did you…?!” You trailed off, staring up at him in wonderment.

“A man never reveals his secrets, doll.” He grinned and let out a grunt as you launched yourself into his arms, kissing him fiercely at the thoughtfulness of his gift and in recognition of the sheer determination it must have taken to achieve such a feat in rationed England.

His fingers gently plied the items from your grasp, setting them on the bedside table, freeing your hands to latch onto his arms as he cupped your face gently.

“You sure about this, my beautiful girl?” He whispered and your breath hitched in your throat at the tender look on his face just inches from yours.

“Yes.” You nodded quickly, sliding your fingers into his hair to pull his lips back to yours greedily.

A pleased noise rolled from his throat and across your tongue as he coaxed your mouth open, his fingers shifting to make steady work at the buttons on your jacket before he unwound your hands from his dark curls to slide the garment off, tossing it in the general direction of the chair that held his. You could not help the giggle that bubbled up from your chest at that as you moved to undo the buttons of his shirt one by one.

The tug of his teeth on your lower lip quickly transformed your laughter to shuddering breath as you held tightly to the open sides of his shirt, feeling him tug your tie free from your collar before it joined the pile of clothes somewhere on the plush blue carpet of the hotel room floor. Your shirt and skirt were quick to join it, leaving you in your brassiere and slip, garter belt and underwear still hidden from view.

“You have a remarkable number of layers on, doll.” He huffed as his mouth descended along your throat to suck at the crook of your shoulder, installing a dramatic curve in your spine as you arched against him wantonly with a half-swallowed cry of pleasure.

“Y…you have almost as many…” You protested, tugging the ends of his shirt from his trousers before pushing it from his shoulders only to be met with his undershirt.

The sheer broadness of him had never quite been so very apparent and had you licking your lips as you struggled with the last barrier between you and his torso, your ID tags rasping metallically against his.

“Not nearly as complicated though.” He muttered as his fingers worked at the hook and eye closure of your bra until you felt the band go slack and he leaned back to slide the straps down your arms, making you shiver as your breasts were revealed to his hungry gaze.

Bucky’s heavy exhale fluttered against your collarbone, grown cool by the time it traversed the distance between you, and you shuddered slightly, looking to the side shyly. He leaned in to brush his nose against yours tenderly, pecking your lips.

“Whatcha hiding for, gorgeous?” His tone was gentle and had your eyes slowly sliding to meet his, an action he rewarded with a deep kiss.

He continued to distract you with repeated meetings your lips, each time with growing intensity as his palms slid upwards along your sides to cup your breasts. The meeting of flesh had you inhaling sharply through your nose, hands seeking anchor as your fingers twisted into his beltloops where his trousers hung open around his hips – yet again delaying you in your purpose of undressing him. As his thumbs honed in on your sensitive peaks, Bucky elicited all manner of noises from your throat only to eagerly devour them.

“D’ya have any idea how soft you are doll?” He sighed against your lips as he kneaded your tender flesh. “’Cept right here.” He smirked as he tugged at your nipples and you whined his name, pressing impossibly close against him, realizing he was anything but soft.

Your shimmies and writhes against him seemed to serve as a reminder of the greater purpose at hand and Bucky’s fingers ceased their torment, sliding down to your hips to divest you of your slip before beginning to work at your stockings. Toeing off your shoes, you pushed his trousers from his hips, letting gravity do the rest.

“So many hooks and straps and loops…” He muttered as his mouth dipped to the hollow of your throat, though his fingers seemed more than capable of stripping you down to only your underwear.

Seizing your hips, Bucky guided you back onto the bed, and you could not help the sigh at that flew from your mouth at the feel of a real mattress with springs and a duvet, drawing a broad grin across his face as he crawled over you, coaxing you to lay back.

“Precious women like you should always have luxurious beds like these. None of those stinking Army cots…” His hands slid beneath your spine to half guide, half drag you up to rest on the obnoxious mountain of pillows.

Staring up at him in awe, at a complete loss for words, you settled on pressing up onto your elbows to kiss him firmly, hoping to convey your appreciation physically rather than trying to summon speech. As his lips parted from yours to begin sliding down your body, you let out a slight huff of annoyance, earning a chuckle against your collarbone which rumbled through his chest and into your body. He lifted his head slightly as his fingers wove through the ball chain of your ID tags as he seemed to notice them for the first time.

“I always wondered if you ladies had these.”

You bit your lip to smother your grin as he never hesitated to say what was on his mind, a constant stream of commentary on the world around him, and rather than annoying, you found it utterly adorable.

“Are you laughin’ at me, doll?” He smirked and gave a gentle tug, pulling a genuine laugh from you, to which he responded with a brilliant grin. “Alright then, I’ll give you something to laugh about.” He bowed his head to drag the flat of his tongue across your nipple, your resulting whimper bouncing off the walls as he resumed his teasing of your opposite breast.

“B…Bucky…” Your eyes shot wide as his plush lips sealed around that tender peak, applying a positively euphoric suction that had you burying your fingers in his hair and pressing your body closer to his mouth in silent demand.

With careful precision, his knee slid its way between your thighs, applying coaxing pressure to each in turn until you provided enough room for him to settle between them. The feeling of his hard length slotting against your core with only the thin barrier of your underwear separating your intimate flesh had your jaw dropping open in a silent ‘oh’ – a revelation unto itself despite all the experiences you had enjoyed with him thus far. Undulating your hips against his experimentally, you shuddered at the ragged, abbreviated groan he pressed against your sternum, caught in the midst of traversing your chest. Thoroughly encouraged, you repeated the action, savagely gnawing on your lip as he bit off a curse before his mouth reached its destination and laved at your neglected nipple.

Nestling tighter against you, Bucky began to roll his hips against you in earnest, obliterating your ability to think and scheme against him at the blinding pleasure his combined actions induced. You could feel the smug angle of his lips against your abdomen as his mouth was trailing lower on your body, his fingers curling into the waistband of your underwear to peel it from your body. Shifting back to free the interfering item from your legs, he gazed down at you with almost black eyes, his pupils having nearly devoured his irises in his arousal, before stretching forward onto his stomach.

Blinking rapidly, you raised up on your elbows to watch him hoist one of your legs over a strong shoulder and then the other, shuffling embarrassingly close to the apex of your thighs.

“Bucky?” You squeaked hesitantly.

He raised an eyebrow up at you, his pink tongue darting out the wet his lips, nearly matching the flush that had painted its way across his cheeks and down his neck. “Yes, doll?”

“What…” You swallowed thickly as your throat clenched erratically.

“Making good on a promise.” He replied seriously before stretching forward to deliver a thorough kiss to your folds that fairly sucked the air from your lungs, an odd whistling sound echoing through you as you savagely burrowed your fingers into the bedding.

When his tongue narrowed in on that sensitive bundle of nerves, it was your turn to bite off a curse, slumping back onto the pillows as he hummed against you in what was surely mock sympathy as he most certainly did not let up, his efforts only doubling. As your hips began to jerk and writhe, he slung a heavy forearm across your pelvis to pin you in place, only shifting closer and tracing his forefinger around your entrance teasingly. It was all you could do not to kick and wail as you felt yourself becoming embarrassingly slick, the noises he was making growing ever so obscene and filling the hotel room.

“Fuck!” You whined against your palm as his finger finally sunk into your wet heat, its passage remarkably eased by your arousal, hips bucking hard enough to jar his arm slightly.

“Damn you’re delicious, doll.” He growled against you, lips smacking loudly as he began to suck at your pearl, finger working you open enough to add a second before beginning a demanding rhythm.

“Oh…oh...god…” You cried out in agony, too far gone to remember your desire to be quiet, feeling the tension of pending release growing ever closer under his amorous onslaught.

“I know, I know…” He soothed, only quickening his pace, hooking his fingers towards the front of your body, sending your back into a dramatic curve from the mattress, a tortured moan ripping from your throat. “Oh, I have to see that again.” He rasped and sought that precise spot with a ruthless single-minded precision until he was rewarded with not only the same reaction, but your strangled cry as your orgasm slammed into you with breath-taking force.

As you returned to earth from your visit to the celestial plane, the first sensation you became aware of was tender, damp kisses being pressed to your inner thigh as Bucky murmured soft words of encouragement to you.

“There’s my gorgeous girl, holy hell that was incredible, did you enjoy that half as much as I did?”

You managed a wordless noise in the affirmative that summoned him to your side, his lips feathering kisses up your jaw to your ear, the tickle of his moustache making you laugh breathlessly.

“Good?” He murmured and you nodded quickly, turning to look at his still-expectant face.

“Yes.” You cobbled together a verbal response, and he blessed you with a warm smile which you leaned in to press your lips against in gratitude.

“Good.” He swiped his tongue along your lips before suddenly slipping from the bed, making you raise your head in confusion.

Stalking over to find your utility bag amongst the sea of discard items and clothing, he proudly retrieved the three condoms that had announced your hopes and intentions for you by appearing in the rowboat, unceremoniously shucking off his boxers as he made his way back to you. You had held his length before, stroked it to completion, but that paled in comparison to seeing the full expanse of him in the light of day.

“My gorgeous doll, you might not say a lot, but you sure don’t mind looking at what you like.” He smirked unabashedly as he set two of the paper packets on the night table beside you, unwrapping the third to unroll the protective latex onto his cock.

Rather than letting his teasing words dissuade you, though they did cause your teeth to sink into your lower lip, you chose to allow your eyes to linger on his actions, rather fascinated by the whole process. By the male anatomy as well. Task managed, he was climbing over you once more, blocking the golden light of afternoon that was filtering in through the windows with his body, warmth radiating from his skin. He settled easily between your legs once more, still parted from his early activities as you really had not summoned the wherewithal to move yet, and stroked his length through the lingering slick gathered along your folds.

A broken sigh fell from his lips before they clashed with yours, not quite aligned, but the sentiment was still there, body shuddering as you slid your arms around him to cling to his shoulders. It was difficult to tell just whom Bucky was teasing as he continued to rut against you, the tip of his cock brushing against your overly-sensitive bundle of nerves, both of you huffing through your nostrils until at last he began to sink into you.

Tearing your lips from his, you sucked in gasping breaths at the feel of the foreign intrusion, appreciating the fact that his pace seemed to slow in response to that. Appreciating the pause he afforded you when his pelvis slotted snuggly against yours once he was seated fully inside you. Cracking open your clenched eyes, you gulped tightly as they were immediately met by Bucky’s, crowned by a furrowed brow, but flicking over your features studiously as if awaiting your instruction.

“I’m ok.” You breathed and he nodded, immediately seizing your lips in a kiss once more as he rocked forward, earning a ragged moan as your fingertips dug into the skin of his back.

His familiarity with this sort of activity had always been apparent, but was exceptionally obvious now as he slowly began the rhythmic push and pull to drive you both towards climax. The sheer intimacy of it was too much and yet it was not nearly enough, your body craving ever more, ever faster, with increasing desperation. The rare moments that Bucky’s lips were not on yours, they were filling the room with choked-off moans or statements of the filthiest order.

“God doll, you feel so fucking good around me.”

“So tight. I can feel how wet you are too, even with this rubber on.”

“You’re gonna cum for me, aren’t ya? You’re gripping on me like a…fuck I can’t think when you do that…”

His ability to even speak while experiencing such mind-numbing pleasure, rambling though it was, was fairly awe-inspiring. Your responses were limited to moans and whimpers and cries of his name as his supposition was correct – your orgasm was indeed imminent. All it took was the solicitous stroking of his forefinger against the apex of your pleasure to send you flying over the cliff into paradise, clinging to his body as you cried out in ecstasy.

A string of rasped curses mixed in with several sighs of your name heralded his release as Bucky finished not long after, rocking against you sloppily before sinking down onto your chest with a comforting heaviness. Stroking his back tenderly as he nestled into your neck, you grinned stupidly at the ceiling as you felt quite pleased with your choices.

The pair of you made good use of the rest of the condoms you had brought, with a short break for a meal Bucky procured while you took a bath. He returned with a bottle of brandy as well, finding you still in the bathtub. A lot of water ended up on the floor, a pile of water-logged towels your testament to the attempted clean-up. Eating in bed, you shared stories of your childhoods – Bucky’s about growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, yours of the small two-storey house with its screen door and front porch from which you had watched your brother play with the neighbourhood boys.

You fell asleep in one another’s arms after the final condom was disposed of, the sun long set, but awoke sometime in the night to the unsettling sound of an air raid siren. Not as common in 1943, yet being as close as you were to Canary Wharves, the Luftwaffe still made the occasional bomb run. Startled to find the bed empty, you sat up sharply to see Bucky sitting in front of the window, completely naked, intermittently illuminated by the flashes of distant explosions and anti-aircraft fire.

“Sorry doll, didn’t mean to wake ya.” He muttered and you shook your head, sliding to the end of the bed.

“You ok?” You tilted your head, blinking into a particularly bright flash.

“Hmmm…” He replied noncommittally, turning back to the scene before him with a frown. “I’ve dropped a lot of those. Done a lot of killing.”

Swallowing tightly, you slid to your feet despite the way your heart was pounding in your throat, padding across the carpet towards him.

“Done your job, Bucky. Done what was asked of you.” You assured him, coming to stand behind him, setting your hands on his shoulders.

“If there’s any balance to all this, my ticket was punched a long time ago.” He muttered sullenly and it was your turn to frown.

Bending down to press a kiss to the crown of his head, you stepped in front of him to block his view, perhaps, hopefully, to block his darker thoughts as you shifted to sit on his thighs.

“Whatcha doin’ doll?” He quirked an eyebrow, mouth falling open in a silent moan as your fingers slid between your bodies to gently stroke his length.

“Lightening up.” You replied, invoking the words of your dead brother’s inscription.

It was impossible to think of a more important piece of advice or a more importance source in that moment. A young man who would never get the chance to spend one more time in his lover’s arms, who knew you better than anyone in the entire world. And you were most certainly going to follow it. You had to be up in less than three hours, to catch the first train to High Wycombe, and you would not pass up this moment with Bucky. The future was unknowable, your brother’s death had certainly taught you that.

Bucky’s fingers curled into your hips as his mouth descended onto yours greedily, clearly in agreement with your plan, despite the lack of remaining condoms. Shuffling closer, you guided his now fully hard cock into your body, your soft noises of pleasure colliding with his in the space between your parted lips. Working together, with plenty of guidance from his firm grip, you began to rocking your hips, using his shoulders for leverage. His head fell back to stare up at you in awe, jaw slack, adam’s apple bobbing viciously.

“Christ, I love you…” His face betrayed such vulnerability, lips trembling slightly, that you quickly lifted your hands to cradle his cheeks, even as your lashes grew suddenly damp.

“I love you too, John. So much.” You replied thickly, rather resenting the dramatic wobble in your voice.

The tiniest of smiles pulled at his lips before his face grew serious once more and he lunged forward to kiss you hungrily, hands anchoring your shoulders so he might thrust up into your body with a sudden need. It was all you could do to hang on, though pleasure itself still managed to sweep you away, leaving you only with the vague recognition of him half pulling out mid-release.

It was terribly difficult to leave him in that comfortable, if messy, bed a few hours later. He did not make it easy either, impossible to untangle from your body like an unwieldy piece of seaweed. Yet somehow you managed to make your trains and arrive at your desk at the appointed hour. Focusing on the task at hand with the pleasurable ache between your legs was altogether another challenge, forcing you to sit on first one hip and then the other.

You had just returned after the lunch break when your phone rang, your greeting barely out of your mouth before Bucky’s question came down the line.

“Did you know you know where they played yesterday’s match?” He asked flatly and it took you several seconds to comprehend that he was speaking in code and just what he was getting at.

You swallowed painfully. “Yes, I did sir.”

Of course you did, you were in the room on Thursday night when they had chosen Bremen as the target for yesterday’s mission.

“A lot of our best players struck out, you know. Buck included.”

He sounded utterly unlike himself, cold and distant, not the man you had left just hours ago in that hotel room in London. All the same, your heart broke for him, and for yourself too. You liked Major Cleven – this war was nothing but cruel.

“I’m so sorry B-Major Egan.” You corrected yourself quickly, eyeing Myrtle across the room.

“Well I hope you all pick a better field for tomorrow’s match because I’m pitching.”

You opened your mouth to reply as your heart dropped through the floor, but the sound of the handset slamming into the cradle resounded over the line before it went dead, giving you no opportunity to speak. To wish him luck or, heaven forfend, goodbye. You hung up your phone with a slightly shaking hand as a deep sense of dread threaded its way through your stomach.

-------------------------

Read Part Five - "I Trusted You!"

"Trust" Series Masterlist

Tag list: @gretagerwigsmuse, @precious-little-scoundrel, @rubyfruitjungle, @storysimp, @mads-weasley, @xxanaduwrites, @bcon24, @fxxiva, @slowsweetlove, @hockeyboysarehot, @darylas

#john egan x reader #bucky egan x reader #john egan imagine #john egan fic #john egan #john bucky egan #mota fic #masters of the air fanfic

309 notes · View notes

notalexhorne · 1 year ago

Text

You know what I think goes really unappreciated about Taskmaster? The setting. I’ve talked at length about the house itself, and how weird it is; the perfect amount of psychologically off-putting, too small for purpose so they have to shuffle crew between rooms when they want to use the lab or the lounge or whatever.

But the location as a whole is so fucking strange, and their commitment to staying their has only made it even more bizarre of a choice with each passing series. It’s a panel show with lore, which is strange in and of itself, and I’ve talked about that at length as well. But with that lore comes new set pieces every series. And it’s an inherent necessity to keep the show from getting stale. New set pieces are needed both so the show stays vibrant and exciting for the audience, but also so contestants don’t come in knowing all the same tricks from previous series. Suddenly, there’s a caravan that wasn’t there before. Now there’s a cow, and a strange dome, and a phone box, and some landscaping, and a frankly terrifying statue of Greg, and a new deck, and on and on it goes.

And then this series, there’s something which isn’t a shed and isn’t a caravan and isn’t a tent, but all three at once. And it’s where the shed ought to be. But the shed hasn’t been replaced; they’ve just crammed it behind the caravan, with the cow and the phone box, and the giant knife throwing target from the promo photos from series 14, which is also new because it was never a set piece to begin with.

There isn’t enough room for this. They don’t get rid of old set pieces. If this were the NZ/AU ranch, it wouldn’t be a problem. That place is huge. But this isn’t a ranch. It’s a groundskeeper’s cottage on a golf course in London. Each new set piece eats up more and more garden space, and actively makes the garden more hostile to do tasks in. It resembles the inside of the house more and more with each series, crammed with incongruously mis-matched crap that vaguely fits a theme, if that theme is “random old junk an eccentric old man has collected on a whim.” (The lounge is themed, but let’s be real; the rest of the house is a nightmare.)

I love any piece of media where the setting is itself a character, and the show has been leaning into that so much lately. Desiree had it right. The house could very well be a living thing at this point. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go into a house like that if you’re someone who’s used to a minimalist atmosphere, and be told to concentrate on tasks that don’t make sense. It would definitely explain a fair bit of the behaviour we see on the show.

It might also explain why other people go in and seem so wholly unbothered by the whole thing, honestly. Look at what people bring in for prizes, especially if they’re prizes they bring in from their own homes. I’m thinking specifically about Julian this series. The man could not possibly be less fucked about any of it, honestly.

It’s an unexplored meta, I think. But one that could be worth exploring as the house and garden become more and more unhinged.

#taskmaster #honestly it looks a lot like my house #except i don’t force people to stay here and perform weird tasks for my own enjoyment

365 notes · View notes

thepastisalreadywritten · 8 months ago

Text

The most powerful moment of the coronation of King Charles III was not the gold glittering off carriages or epaulettes — not the pomp and show and signifiers of power.

It was precisely their opposite: when Charles shed his gold robes and stood in a thin white shirt, his frail humanity implied.

Then a screen was erected around him and, shielded, he had a private consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who dabbed anointing oil with his hands on Charles’s bare breast.

"This was the most solemn and personal of moments,” Buckingham Palace said.

Charles was bare before God, in privacy, God being one of the last beings with no need to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The Princess of Wales looked on as the screen shielded her father-in-law.

By contrast, she was at that point the most magnificent she had ever been, swathed in layer upon layer of regality, the dress, the robes, the hanging chains, headpiece and ribbons all serving to move the viewing gaze — subjects in every sense — from our awareness of Catherine Middleton with her everyday human DNA and towards the shared fiction of her transcendent queenliness.

Less than a year later, this moment is remembered with new and terrible power.

It is spring again, but it’s a time of hard Lenten moral reflection for us as a nation, in relationship to our royals, as well as an ever more voraciously unprivate modern celebrity culture.

Both the King and the princess have cancer, the latter’s disclosed by Catherine in an unprecedented video address on Friday, March 22.

Catherine’s speech was something of a plea bargain in which she traded not only her customary silence but her most personal of health ordeals in order to put an end to toxic rumours swirling online that had become in tone like an unruly mob rattling at the palace gates.

Or rattling at the figurative locks on her medical notes, with three workers at the London Clinic, where she and the King were treated, suspended and under investigation for allegedly trying to access her records (hers, it is important to note, the King’s were unmolested).

📷: Getty Images

What was so powerful about the anointing of the King was the sacredness of that space in which he could be fully human away from observation and judgment.

There should be another one-on-one consultation that is sacred, where anyone, from King to princess to pauper, can expect to be shriven in total privacy, and that is the sanctity of the medical room.

It used to be that priests were our only bound confidants, we could trust them to be privy to all our spiritual ills.

Now doctors are our secular priests: bound by law and ethics to enshrine confidentiality at the heart of the patient relationship.

As a result, our medical privacy in an age of oversharing and online surveillance feels both stranger and more necessary.

If we knew our every GP-inspected rash was to be posted on TikTok for the nation, many of us would quite literally die of embarrassment.

The King’s appointment behind the three-sided screen can now be viewed through the lens of royal illness.

The lavishly embroidered panels and expensive white shirt now replaced by the flimsy three-sided ward screen on wheels and thin hospital gown that can humble us all.

But it also enacts a principle at the very heart of becoming the monarch.

The medical-like screen is erected in the coronation to tell us there are some places the public cannot go; to tell us that there are sacredly personal moments in which a person, any person, however swathed in our projections of power, needs to be nakedly human.

Otherwise, they will go mad. We need to make sure the screens are erected around Catherine now.

Much is said, quite a lot of it by Prince Harry himself, of the dangers of the wives of the princes repeating the tragic history of their mother, Princess Diana, hunted by photographers.

He remains phobic to any hint of tabloid persecution or paparazzi chase. But this is a sideshow, even an anachronism in 2024.

He and others have not recognised how the “chase” has changed. Who needs paparazzi when there are a billion citizen hacks ready to take pictures with their phones, in case a convalescing woman nips to a Windsor farm shop with her husband?

Instead, the appetite now is not to see but to know.

The royals used to have a contract with the public: we pay for them, and in return, they give us their presence.

Nearly all of their official job is to do with surface: to show up, to put in appearances at a set number of functions, whether at the opening of parliament or the opening of a leisure centre.

But now parts of the online mob seem to be staging a coup. We want more than the surface, we want to puncture the skin barrier of the royal family and occupy from the inside.

The “fans” have become an invasive virus. The royal analogy is often that they are trapped in a gilded zoo. This new model, instead, casts the royals more as lab rats.

When Catherine disappeared from view in January after announcing a “planned abdominal operation,” the response from internet truthers was one of irate entitlement.

They are now the 1980s tabloids: ravening for intimacies and making stuff up when thwarted.

This wasn’t the boomer generation, who are both more respectful of the royals and more private about their own health.

It was the fortysomething mothers frustrated when they can’t track the phone location of everyone in their life; or the twentysomethings on Snap Map.

Both desperate for their personalised new Netflix season of “The Royals” to drop.

Catherine presents with such stoicism and dignity, it is easy to forget where this new invasiveness started: when she was pregnant with Prince George in December 2012 and hospitalised for extreme morning sickness.

While she was sleeping on the ward, a radio station in Australia rang the hospital switchboard pretending to be the Queen.

They broadcast the nurse’s comments about Catherine’s “retching.”

One could only find this prank funny if Catherine had already — a young, wretchedly ill, pregnant woman — been dehumanised.

George is now ten and his mother hospitalised again, and in that decade, the physical security of ill royals may have tightened but their claim to bodily autonomy seems to have weakened.

Some say Kensington Palace “brought it on themselves” by their wish for discretion; this claim is duplicitous.

The late Queen Elizabeth II became increasingly debilitated in her final years with not much detail ever given; just as her father, King George VI, died without disclosing his lung cancer.

I’m glad that the British do not subject their heads of state to the same publicised medical reports as the president of the United States; one shouldn’t have to present a stool swab to sit on the throne.

No, instead the apparent justification of all those clicking and posting conspiracy theories “worried for Catherine’s welfare” was this sinful truth.

As a beautiful, 42-year-old mother of three, her drama was more box office than the ailments of those older, a pound of her flesh was worth more.

Pity, Susan Sontag said in her 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, is close to contempt.

Back then cancer was still taboo. Those around the patient, Sontag says, “express pity but also convey contempt.”

Ask any cancer patient and they will say they don’t want pity: it is too isolating, it sets them apart, an unwanted privilege.

This is why the video plea of Catherine was one of affinity, rather than pity or privilege.

Last year, she sat in robes in Westminster Abbey at the coronation of her father-in-law, next to her future king son and future king husband.

In her video address last week, she sat on a classically English garden bench, pale, alone and in jeans, as bare of pomp as any royal can be.

No mention of kings or titles, just Diana’s ring on her hand.

Rather she gave an appeal, parent to parent, human to human, about her “huge shock” and her care for her “young family.”

And, finally, her kinship with anyone who lives in a vulnerable human body susceptible to a democratic illness like cancer, “you are not alone.”

Or, to paraphrase Richard Curtis:

“I’m just a girl, standing in front of a public, asking for some time to endure gruelling chemotherapy."

NOTE: Additional photos have been included in this article.

80 notes · View notes

aziraphales-library · 1 year ago

Note

hi guys! just want to start off by saying you are incredible and i am so grateful for this library.

do you know if any frenemies to lovers fics at all? i’ve recently read Camping with your Frenemy: It's F***ing Intense by IneffableMcMuffin and it was so good

thanks again!

You can check our #enemies to lovers, #enemies to friends to lovers and #friends to lovers tags for fics you may enjoy. Here are some more along the lines of rivals to lovers...

The Golden Lion by CrentTrimm (E)

Aziraphale, a privateer in the King's Navy, meets an old rival in Port Royal, and their exchange ends in a hasty tussle in a back alley.

Gods in the Gaslight by Anti_kate & rfsmiley (T)

A mysterious rival and a ghost from the past threaten Fell's magical career.

The Devil's in the Flowers by jjgremlinson (M)

For the last eleven years, A.Z. Fell’s Fantastic Flowers has provided quality bouquets and services to the people of London. Whether it’s weddings or funerals, lovesickness or heartbreak, Aziraphale can find the perfect flower for you. But when Crowley’s Flowers, Houseplants, and Other Assorted Leafy Green Things opens up across the street, everything starts to change—and Aziraphale will be damned if he’s going to let this no-good, profit-hungry Crowley steal all his business. (Or, the one where Aziraphale and Crowley are rival florists working in the same neighborhood).

Would I Lie to You? by FeralTuxedo & TawnyOwl95 (E)

Anthony Crowley and Aziraphale Fell are rival team captains on popular comedy panel show Don't Lie To Me, where they exchange insults and banter to an audience of millions. But behind the scenes, a whole other game of truth and lies is being played. A comedy panel show AU

Angel Face with a Taste for Suicidal by Lor_Lupin (E)

When Crowley spots his replacement on his former band for the first time, he doesn't expect the man to push him against a wall but he's not complaining. The Fallen and Flaming Swords, two rival struggling punk bands, hold a grudge against each other and spend more time fighting and performing crass pranks than actually composing songs. Crowley is hurt, Aziraphale is new, a lot of flirting ensues. INEFFABLE HUSBANDS AS HUMAN PUNK BASS PLAYERS. Inspired by the looks of Peter Vincent in Fright Night and Thorne in Laws of Attraction.

Actuarial Risk by doomed_spectacles (M)

A. Z. Fell, principle salesman for Silver City Financial, never paid much attention to his company's main competition, Fourth Circle, LLC. That is, until he met Anthony Crowley. When the rivalry between their respective head offices heats up, they make an arrangement both know is unsustainable. A rival salesman AU with hijinks, fluff, misunderstandings, and a happy ending.

And the one you mentioned...

Camping with your Frenemy: It's F***ing Intense by IneffableMcMuffin (E)

Silly little romp featuring bitchy Aziraphale and Crowley's hips which are incapable of being untruthful.

- Mod D

#good omens #ineffable husbands #adult omens #human au #rivalry #enemies to friends to lovers #enemies to friends #mod d

150 notes · View notes

cetaitlaverite · 19 days ago

Text

Anything to Anywhere

Masters of the Air - John Egan x OC

seemed appropriate to post to commemorate armistice day <3 masterlist is here

22. Just Like We Are

Tangmere Cottage was warm and homely, decorated for Christmas like it was any normal cottage belonging to any normal family. There was a Christmas tree in the living room, strung with tinsel and covered in baubles, and a fire in the fireplace.

When Stella was led through the front door by a man named Bill, one of the two flight sergeants who took care of everything which went on at the cottage, there were already three pilots sitting on the sofas in the lounge, mugs in their hands and Christmas jumpers on over the tops of their uniform shirts.

“Alright, Bambi, lass?” Daisy called when he saw her. “Welcome to Tangmere.”

Stella gave him a smile, shifting her hold on her bag. “Thanks.” She took another look around, at the wood panelling and the line of beer bottles on top of the fireplace and the books on the bookshelf beside it, at the framed paintings on the walls and the patterned rug beneath her feet. “It’s nice,” she said idly.

Across from Daisy, one of the other 161 pilots, a man Stella didn’t know all that well named Sparky, gave her a grin. “Home sweet home,” he replied.

Bill led Stella up the stairs and to the room at the end of the hall. “Right beside the bathroom,” he said with a wink, as though he thought all women were on their menstrual cycles all the time. Nonetheless, he was a nice man, probably around the age her father must have been by now, and he waited for her to put her things down in the bedroom she’d been assigned before taking her on a short tour of the cottage. There were six bedrooms upstairs, all of which were now currently being inhabited, and a bathroom, and downstairs boasted an operations room, a dining room, a kitchen, and two living rooms.

The tour didn’t take long and then Stella was left to unpack her belongings upstairs. She wouldn’t be here for long, true, but her flight wasn’t until tomorrow night and she didn’t want to live out of her bag until then.

Downstairs, the pilots’ idle chatter continued and Stella was swept up in it easily when she came down to sit with them. The conversation raged on fast, veering from films to music to sports to the last time they hadn’t had to work over Christmas. Stella sat and listened, drumming her fingers on her thighs, before her eyes found the bookshelf in the corner and her legs were leading her over to it before she had consciously told them to do so.

There were a variety of titles on the shelf, nonfiction and fiction alike. Some books were about aviation, others were thriller novels - Stella was delighted to discover a romance novel amongst the selection, considering she was the first female pilot to billet here. She withdrew it from its perch and read the back, smiling to herself at the description of a whirlwind romance set against the backdrop of Victorian London. She wondered who had brought it here with them and left it behind to share, wondered whether that pilot was still around.

Replacing the book, Stella kept looking, skimming her fingers gently over the spines, until a voice calling her name had her turning around, one of her hands still resting against the books.

“Nervous for your first flight with 161?” Sparky wanted to know, one hand resting atop the ankle he had resting on his opposite knee, the other holding his mug to his lips.

Stella shrugged, letting her hand fall and turning fully to face him and the rest of the room. “Of course,” she admitted, “but only because it’s my first. Once I’ve got it out of the way I’ll be fine.”

Daisy grinned at her, because it was a sentiment he’d given her before her first flight with 138.

“Where have they got you landing, lass?” Daisy asked before sipping from his mug. “France? Belgium? Holland?”

“France,” Stella said. “I think they’re starting me off easy.”

“Oh, none of it’s easy,” he dismissed her, chuckling under his breath. “Something’s always bound to go wrong. But it’s important work and the Resistance laddies work hard to get us down in one piece, so as long as we remember our training it’s all alright in the end.”

“Hear hear,” Sparky agreed, raising his mug as though in toast. “My first flight I transmitted my morse code identification wrong so everyone on the ground thought I was a Jerry. I had to circle and try again and transmit it right the next time, cost us ten minutes because I was an idiot.”

Stella laughed.

Daisy was grinning. “My first flight they had me landing in a field so waterlogged it was like trying to land in the fucking Channel. Managed to get the Lizzie to stop about a metre away from a forest. No idea how I got the fucking thing to take off again after.”

“I’ll do you one better,” chimed in the other pilot, a man nicknamed Romeo because he’d tried to chat up every single one of the wireless operators when he’d first arrived, Stella had been informed. “On my first flight - landing in the Netherlands, mind you - the field they’d picked wasn’t nearly big enough. The Resistance girl who’d picked it didn’t have an idea about aviation. Not her fault, really, but did they have to saddle her with the responsibility of locating the landing area?” He shook his head, barking a laugh at the memory. “Anyway, I circled four times before realising I couldn’t land, so I made my Joe parachute out the back, holding on to as many of the supplies we were delivering as he could fit in his arms.” He was grinning at them all in turn as he told the story. “Dead dangerous, in hindsight, making him parachute from that low with that much stuff in his arms, but it all worked out in the end. Just lucky that I didn’t have to take anything back home with me. That would’ve been an unlucky refugee who’d been assigned to go home that day otherwise.”

“You picking anyone up tomorrow, Bambi, or just dropping off?” Daisy asked, tapping his mug against his thigh in a steady rhythm.

“Just dropping off,” Stella answered. “But I’ve got some radios to pick up, so I have to land whether I like it or not.”

Romeo whistled and raised his mug to her in cheers. “Godspeed, Bambi. Godspeed.”

Daisy rolled his eyes. “Silly bastard, scaring the lassie like that.” To Stella, he said, “You’ll be fine. You’ve done your training, wouldn’t have been picked for the job if you couldn’t do it.”

Stella hummed her agreement, heading back across the room and resuming her place on the sofa. “I’ll be fine,” she agreed, and realised as she said it that she believed it, too. “First one’s just the worst, but I’ll get it done and dusted no trouble.”

This turned out to only be a slight overestimation; ‘no trouble’ may have been a tad optimistic.

While Stella had practised taking off and landing her Lysander in tiny patches of grass countless times to prepare her for her first deployment with 161, trying to do it with only the light of the moon and a shoddy flare path, and the knowledge that she may be caught by the Germans at any second, was an entirely different ball game.

A small group of Resistance operatives were waiting for her on the ground with bicycles and an old car, staring up at her as she circled and tried again, circled and tried again, well aware that her time was running out. The Gestapo didn’t stop patrolling at night; any second now she could be caught in a searchlight or the Resistance operatives could be caught on the ground or a German reconnaissance plane could fly over and catch her, or any number of other dangers.

Stella tried not to think about it. She circled for the third time and pulled on the yoke with all of her might, forcing the plane to land in this tiny strip of greenery on the outskirts of a French village whether it wanted to or not.

The turnaround was rapid. The spy she’d been ferrying climbed out of the back of the Lysander the instant the wheels hit the ground, before Stella had finished taxiing, and then there were Resistance ops in the back, shoving in old radios which were either broken or had been compromised for one reason or another.

“Allez!” called one of them, giving a firm pat to the floor of the plane before he climbed out of it.

Stella knew very little French but she’d been briefed enough to know what that meant. She turned the plane around as best she could in the limited space, then had to try four times before she eventually got it in the air.

She sped back to England faster than she had been briefed to but her heart was in her throat, the stress the adrenaline had been keeping at bay flooding her veins. Lizzies couldn’t go very fast, anyway, she comforted herself; no one would even notice she’d been speeding. She was deep in French airspace by now and half expecting a Messerschmitt to jump out at her at any moment - either that or anti-aircraft fire. With only the light of the moon to fly by and a whole country’s worth of Nazis below her, Stella accelerated back towards England like she really was being chased.

Never had she been more relieved to land. She arrived safely back at RAF Tangmere in the early hours of the morning on the 28th December and slumped back in her seat, reassuring the wireless operators over the radio that she was fine, that she hadn’t run into any trouble, that she had dropped her Joe off and retrieved the radios and, aside from some delays, everything had gone according to plan.

She filed her flight report with eyelids drooping, the adrenaline all long-since worn off, and dragged her feet behind her on the way back to the cottage. She was slow and sluggish with every movement, took much too long in the shower but at least she was the only one using it, and when she found herself tucked up in bed the first few rays of morning sunshine were peering in around the edges of the window.

Stella groaned and rolled over, burying her face into her pillow, and fell into a deep, restful sleep.

It became almost monotonous after a while. After three landings in various locations in occupied France she’d worked out the details in her routine, and as time wore on she got better and better at ironing out the kinks. She found that she should start to come in for the landing earlier than she might have guessed when her landing strip was too small, had started to be able to navigate using French towns and forests and lakes she often flew over regardless of where she was going. Sometimes she saw the same Resistance operatives as she’d seen before and became familiar with them - she never learned their names and they never learned hers, but she could greet them with their code names and they could greet her with her call sign, which, in fairness, was all anyone called her these days anyway, and it was almost like they were friends.

She started to become numb, even, to the reality of what she was doing. Months passed and she no longer batted an eye when her next assignment would come through. She’d ferried spies into the outskirts of Paris, of Bordeaux, had gone as far as Monaco to deliver Joes and supplies. She flew in the dead of night, landed in the tiniest airstrips known to man by sheer force of will - Lysanders formally need a five hundred yard long airstrip to land at the very least; Stella had gotten used to landing hers in one hundred and fifty - and she made idle chatter with the Joe she was dropping as the Resistance agents swapped out supplies, then turned around and flew back to England. She rarely got fired on, but when she did she didn’t think all that much of it; so late at night, the gunners couldn’t see her anyway. Their aim was always miles off.

“What’s it like, Babs?” the other Hut 6 girls wanted to know. Their resentment of her promotion had fizzled away, replaced by hope that it would be them next who were promoted now that women were allowed to fly for 161.

Stella laughed softly, removing her shoes and socks and tucking her frozen feet beneath her, digging her toes into her blanket. “It’s not all that different from what I was doing before,” she replied.

Lucky scoffed. “You stay in the cottage. You land in occupied territory. You meet the Resistance and you pick up refugees. It is very different.”

“What’s it like on the ground?” Houds asked.

Stella shrugged. “I hardly experience it. The turnaround is so fast. I land in dark fields and exchange hellos with Resistance operatives and then I take off again. All I can really tell you is that it’s dead quiet, like the grave, and that everyone’s looking over their shoulder every five seconds. I don’t see much but you can feel the fear in the air.” She shook her head. “What it must be like to live that way all the time.”

“What are the Joes like?” Donny asked. “We meet them briefly, of course, but not properly. What are they really like?”

Formally, even 161 pilots weren’t supposed to get friendly with the spies, but in practice it was only natural that they did. Stella had dropped off and picked up the same spies on a few occasions and, besides, she had to train her Joes every time she ferried them to assist in the moonlight landings in preparation for their pick up.

She didn’t know any of their real names, much like with the Resistance operatives, but she knew most of their code names - the ones she’d ferried, anyway. And she liked most of them, how they immediately respected her and held such reverence for her job, how they acknowledged the importance of her role in the entire clandestine affair. To Stella, the spies were at the top of the food chain; to the spies, the pilots were. No one was going anywhere or doing anything without pilots mad enough to want to fly them over there.

“I don’t like any of them better than I like you, don’t worry,” Stella teased, picking up her teddy bear and sitting him in her lap. “But they’re nice. They respect pilots a lot. I don’t know much about any of them but they make the trips over feel shorter because a lot of them like to crack jokes.”

Lucky fell back on her bed and sighed. “I cannot wait to be a 161 pilot.”

Donny scoffed. “I’ve been here the longest, if anyone gets the call up next it should be me.”

Stella laughed. “Just remember that whenever anyone gets the call up it’s because someone else has been stood down, either dead, caught, or missing. So don’t go wishing too hard for it. I might be the pilot you replace.”

Donny frowned. “Don’t say things like that.” She shook her head, worrying at her bottom lip. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You’re not ever going to have any issues - they wouldn’t have called you up if they thought you would.”

Stella shrugged, smiling softly at her. “It’s not so predictable as that. Any number of things could go wrong.”

“Is it scary?” Houds asked. She was hugging her pillow to her chest, gazing at Stella over the top of it.

Stella took a moment to consider the question. Was it? She didn’t think so. It should have been, but after all the many flights she’d flown for 138 - almost thirty before she’d gotten promoted - and after all the many flights she’d now made for 161, she’d become desensitised. It always felt like she was landing behind enemy lines but the meaning of those words had become lost, faded, like the hem of a pair of pyjamas worn too often, once scratchy and stiff and now soft and covered in loose thread.

“No,” she decided. “It’s not.”

March arrived with drizzle and a chill in the air. Stella was still wearing John’s jacket everyday. Even when summer arrived she thought she’d still wear it. It no longer smelled like him but it reminded her of him all the same, made her feel like he was still close enough to touch.

She still hadn’t heard anything of him but she knew she wouldn’t for a while even if he was alive and a prisoner of war; there were continuous reports in the newspapers that the Germans were being lazy with POW correspondence, deliberately taking months on end to send out their letters, and even if John was alive and was a prisoner of war, by the time his letter got sent out and made it to Thorpe Abbotts, and then by the time the mail clerk at Thorpe Abbotts sent it on to the RAF head office in London, and by the time the RAF head office got it delivered to Tempsford, it would have been months and months and months. Stella comforted herself with the thought that his words might already be on their way to her, lost in the postal system somewhere but on their way all the same.

The next time Stella was bound for Tangmere, being sent out on her fifteenth flight for 161 Squadron, she was being sent out with the promise of a party in her honour upon her return.

Fifteen flights with 161 was, apparently, a big deal. If you managed fifteen successful missions then, statistically, you were fifty percent more likely to never get caught at all, or so the other pilots said. Secretly, Stella wondered whether this was all just an excuse to hold another party; no one had had a birthday in a while.

“We are going to get wine, Babs,” Lucky was gushing as Stella packed her bag to head off. “And cake! Coffee cake, because it is your favourite.”

Stella tipped her head back as she laughed. “Coffee cake is your favourite, Lucky.”

Lucky rolled her eyes and hit her gently on the shoulder. “Is your favourite too. You told me so.”

“I don’t have a favourite,” Stella objected. “I like all cake.”

“You have only tried two flavours,” Lucky pointed out.

Stella shot her a grin. “And I like them both equally.”

Stella seemed to have acquired many, many more belongings since coming to Tempsford. What with her birthday and then Christmas and the outings the other girls had taken her on to go shopping, she’d arrived with barely anything and now had to pick and choose what she took with her to Tangmere. Her bag was full to bursting by the time she’d loaded it up, but as she reached for Ralph, ready to lay him on top of her pile of clothes and toiletries before she zipped the bag up, Lucky grabbed her arm to halt her.

“Wait,” she said, then hurried off to her bed. When she returned to Stella’s side, Lucky had her childhood stuffed bunny in her hand. She was holding it by one of its paws as she held it out to Stella. “You take Królik. I will look after Ralph.”

With raised eyebrows and a confused smile, Stella accepted the bunny and held it carefully to her chest. “Why?”

“For good luck,” Lucky explained, as though this should have been obvious. “It is your fifteenth 161 flight. Is special. You always fly with your John’s lucky jacket and now I would like you to fly with my lucky rabbit. This way, you will have all of the luck in the world, from the two people who love you the most.”

Stella’s smile became strained.

Lucky noticed and rolled her eyes before tugging her into a hug. “Babs,” she said, “you have got to stop crying every time someone is nice to you. Is embarrassing.”

Stella laughed and gave her a shove as she pulled out of the hug. “Shut up. I’m not even crying.” But there were tears in her eyes, and she had to fight hard to hold them in.

“Now, you take care of Królik for me,” Lucky said, electing to ignore Stella. “He will bring you luck but you must be nice to him.”

“I will,” Stella vowed, hugging the bunny to her chest.

“I will take good care of Ralph,” Lucky promised in return.

“I know you will,” Stella assured her, smiling.

Looking between the two stuffed animals, Lucky smiled warmly. “They are best friends,” she asserted, sharing her smile with Stella. “Just like we are.”

“Then we have to make sure we reunite them,” Stella replied, grinning. She laughed as she reached for Ralph and handed him over to Lucky.

Stella was careful as she tucked Królik into her bag. She took care to ensure none of his fur was caught in the zip before she zipped it up.

Fully packed and ready to go, Stella turned to Lucky with a smile. “I’ll see you in a few days,” she said, leaning down for a hug.

Lucky squeezed Stella tightly, scruffing her hair as they pulled apart. “See you in a few days,” she returned. “With yourself and my rabbit all in one piece. And lots of cake.”

“Lots,” Stella agreed with a laugh. She picked up her bag and headed for the door, blowing a kiss over her shoulder.

Lucky pretended to catch it and stamp on it, which made Stella laugh.

“Fly safe, Babs!” Lucky called as Stella reached the door. “I will miss you too much if you do not.”

#ata #my writing #masters of the air #masters of the air x oc #masters of the air fanfic #masters of the air fanfiction #hbo war #hbo war x oc #john egan #john bucky egan #bucky egan #john egan x oc #bucky egan x oc

17 notes · View notes

ginandoldlace · 4 months ago

Text

Nowhere says “the Establishment” quite like St James's Square. Built by Henry Jermyn after the 1660 Restoration, rebuilt by the Georgians and periodically hacked at ever since, St Jim’s (as Eliza Doolittle might have put it) was home to peers, prime ministers and panjandrums of every stripe; today though, the square is 100% commercial/institutional, with the usual deadening effect.

No. 4 is a survivor from 1725; once home to the Waldorf Astors, it was the headquarters of de Gaulle’s Free French during WW2, and was taken over by the old In and Out club when they vacated their Piccadilly mansion.

No. 3 was owned by the Devonshires and the Palmerstons, and remodelled in 1818 by Sir John Soane. And demolished in 1930, the heyday for smashing up Soane. The replacement, a neo-Georgian office block by Alfred & David Ospalek, has some pleasing stone relief panels by Newbury A Trent depicting cries of London. They hardly make up for the loss though.

And if you think that was vandalism, Nos. 1-2 on the corner of Charles II Street was Ossulton House, from 1753. Until the Westminster Bank acquired the site and, in 1950, demolished it and built themselves an office block. Which in turn has gone, to be replaced by the current gem, which is as pure an example of the City of Westminster’s preferred contextual building style as to make you want to scream…

Scream away. No. 8 follows the same recipe. Look how discreetly it blends its modern credentials with these Georgians. The original no. 8 was Josiah Wedgwood’s showroom in the C18, but you can’t stop the tide of change. Indeed, for most of the C20, no one bothered trying, it seems…

10 notes · View notes

zerotwentysims · 1 year ago

Text

Renovated Chateau

My take on a renovated French Chateau. It's a combination of traditional architecture and modern furnishings. Fully Furnished CC Build.

Main level : entrance hall, central staircase, formal living room, games salon, formal dining room, kitchen/informal dining, half bathroom, cloak room and secundairy staircase/elevator to all floors.

Upper level : family living room, full bathroom, 2 large bedrooms and master apartment (with it's own dining/living area, full bathroom and walk-in closet).

Basement : half bathroom, gym/pool/sauna, full bathroom, butlers quarters (with a private bathroom), vault, laundry, utility room and storage room.

Greenhouse : with it's own vegetable garden

Guesthouse/garage : self contained guesthouse, comes with an open plan living/dining/kitchen, bedroom, full bathroom and closet.

Gardens : formal landscaped gardens and barbecue area

Lot size : 64x64, designed for the Hound's Head lot in Brindleton Bay. This build also looks good on the Dresden House lot in Windenburg.

Packs used for the exterior/shell/gardens : Get Together and Strangerville,. Jungle Adventures, Vampires and Cottage Living were used for some minor details. Many other packs used for the interior.

I won't upload a CC Free version since there too many elements in this build that just won't look good without CC in my opinion. On request I could send/upload the shell without CC though.

Available on the gallery, ID : zerotwenty-sims (please tick "include Custom Content", or download the TrayFiles directly below)

In case of any questions : please feel free to drop a line

Free CC used from following amazing creators:

ZT : Marble Murals Part II, Valium Painting

KTA : Classic Paintings 2, Marble Floors 4 and 5, Old Tiles 3 and Wood Floors 19

Harlix : Bafroom, Baysic + Baysic Bathroom, Orjanic, Jardane, Tiny Twafellers, Kichen and Harluxe

Felixandre : every pack (see note)

SkinnyAfter5 : Short Hedge

Ravasheen : Uplifting Elevator

SimFileShare : Tray Files

Note : I used Chateau Part 5 and Part 6 (library and the panel interior walls/curtains) which are still on Early Access. If you don't have these packs yet I suggest to replace the library with the library pack from Strange Storyteller Sims (free) and the panel walls/curtains with ones from Felixandre's previous packs like Paris, Florence, Trianon or London.

#sims 4 build #sims4 #sims 4 screenshots #sims 4 download #sims 4 #ts4 download #ts4 build #the sims 4 #ts4 screenshots #ts4 lot #showusyourbuilds #cc build #zt-builds

82 notes · View notes

leatherrepairs · 1 year ago

Text

Restore the beauty of your furniture with our professional on-site furniture repair service. Our skilled technicians will come to your location and provide high-quality repairs to bring new life to your beloved pieces. Say goodbye to the hassle of transporting your furniture and trust our experts to deliver exceptional results. Contact us today to schedule your on-site repair service.

#On-site furniture repair service #Bolster Repair london #Panel Replacement london #Leather Repairs London #Leather sofa repairs Bromley

0 notes

rcreveal · 6 months ago

Text

Menaced by Memo

Summary:

This takes place sometime before the Antichrist arrives in S1. Ever had to fill out those surveys for work? Aziraphale and Crowley get them, too! A little fluffy work-humor for you. Sendarya's Discord Server Prompt a Week challenge 2024 Prompt: How you said I love you: with storytelling. Thanks for the prompt @whocaresaboutdecent!

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Aziraphale held the receiver of his rather elderly telephone to his ear and dialed urgently. Waiting only half a ring before the much hoped for voice answered on the other end of the line.

“Watsup, angel?” Crowley answered.

“I hadn’t said who I was yet!” Aziraphale fiddled nervously with a piece of thick white cardstock on his cluttered desk.

“Nnnyeah. Caller ID, angel,” explained Crowley, not saying that he could feel the prickle on the back of his neck that meant the angel was in trouble.

Composing himself briefly, Aziraphale says, “I’ve had…a memo ,” saying ‘memo’ as though he’d received a summons to be the guest of honor at an earnest inquiry of the Spanish Inquisition.

Picking up his own piece of heavy parchment, Crowley replies darkly, “Mmm, same,” managing to imply that the Inquisition was happy to entertain two honored guests.

“Usual spot, half an hour?” suggested the angel.

“Actually, I was thinking we might workshop this one?” replied Crowley drily, though only Aziraphale would hear the anxious edge to his laconic drawl that in anyone else might suggest incipient knee knocking terror.

“Oh, OH! Yes, certainly! I’ll just tidy up a bit, just give me a tick to close up.” Aziraphale gently replaced the receiver and set to work making the Bookshop opaque to prying eyes corporeal and ethereal that might check in on their activities. Especially as Crowley was coming over for an extended time.

***

Crowley leaned his back against the front door of the “Very Closed” bookshop as though he was just checking his phone out of the misty rain. The door eased open and he slipped into the dim shop where the blinds were pulled down.

“Follow me,” Aziraphale led him to the back stacks and pushed on a bookcase which, rather than being a wall, swung back revealing a snug little parlor paneled with warm cherry wood. The space was mostly taken up with a table that could easily accommodate charts or maps and the walls were lined with bookshelves and leather appointed benches with upholstered backs.

“Uhhh…” Crowley looked over at the angel quizzically, “I didn’t know this room was here .”

“Pish posh, all old bookstores in London have hidden rooms!” Aziraphale said breezily with a brilliant smile, sweeping his arm out to invite Crowley inside.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Crowley murmurs, stooping into the room, completely missing the sharp glance the angel gives the front of the shop before following him.

Closing the door behind them, Aziraphale made a little miraculous motion and Crowley had the eerie feeling that they were in some way outside of the world. He opened his mouth to comment, but was cut off by the angel.

Pulling out the cream colored cardstock, Aziraphale says, “I got a memo from Home Office with something new!” he explains as he places the memo on the table for examination.

The paper contains the words:

Congratulations!

Your diligent efforts to uphold the Great Plan have been recognized and you have been chosen to participate in a survey to promote Quality Improvement!

Tap here to continue…

“Yeah, that looks bad,” Crowley threw his glasses onto the table. “Lookit mine,” he puts his memo next to Aziraphale’s.

The thick parchment reads:

Think you’re working hard enough? Think again!

To make sure you’re putting in the proper effort towards the Great Plan, complete this survey so we can learn how to wring every bit of glorious success out of you!

“I mean, really, it amounts to the same thing, Crowley,” Aziraphale held both memos up and read them in turn, Crowley hovering over his shoulder.

“But, dontcha think they’re going to ask pointed questions about the assignments? Only, I get a little muddled on which one of us completed which assignment…”

“Didn’t you keep copies of your reports!?” asked Aziraphale, surprised, tapping a panel in the wall and pulling out a stack of ledgers.

Pulling a small slender book out of a secret pocket in the lining of his coat, Crowley acknowledges, “Something like that, but I didn’t keep copies of your reports, did I!”

Sitting next to each other on a leather bench built into the paneled wall, Crowley swallows, and suggests, “You first.”

“Why me!?” wails Aziraphale.

“Upstairs doesn’t drop you into a mongoose infested maze for fifty years if they’re hacked off with you , right?” growled Crowley.

“No, but I don’t fancy a visit from any of my…supervisors, either!” Aziraphale countered, anxious not to name Sandalaphon, Michael, Uriel, and especially Gabriel. Straightening his waist coat and settling his shoulders, he puts both hands on the table to either side of the memo.

Crowley made a little go on motion with his hands and Aziraphale says, “Oh, all right!” and taps the survey, watching the initial words dissolve and new ones form.

“Ah, it says it has ten questions. That's not so bad!” Aziraphale smiles hopefully, Crowley looks dubiously at the memo, “‘Question 1: Full name’,” the angel enters his name, “Why isn't anything happening? I entered my name!” Aziraphale says, querulously.

Crowley leans in and points, “Try tapping the little ‘Next’ arrow down there.”

“Oh yes, thank you,” Aziraphale tapped the next arrow, smiling brightly when the next question materialized.

“Question 2: Title (select every title you have ever held)’ oh, it's a ‘ drop in ’ menu,” Aziraphale scrolls through a seemingly endless list of angelic titles.

“Drop down menu, angel,” Crowley corrects absently while reading the list, “There's really a 37th class Echo specialist? What's an Echo specialist do?”

Aziraphale, still scrolling and mumbling to himself, suggests, “Ah, makes sure there's an appropriate amount of echo for any meeting space?”

“You made that up!”

“I really have no idea, they must have added it while I was down here. Did you see ‘Guardian of the Eastern Gate'?” asked Aziraphale.

“Mmmm, looks like it's alphabetical, keep going, keep going…There! Did you already get ‘Principality’” asked Crowley.

“No! Because it's alphabetical!” Aziraphale says waspishly.

After a few more minutes scrolling and bickering, Crowley suggests, “Didn't you do that thing, you know the thing you mentioned down the pub in 1327? ‘S about designing hedgehogs?”

“Oh, right, yes. Thanks.” Aziraphale tilts back his head, looking down his nose as he taps the memo with one finger.

“I think that's everything…There's no next button on this one!” Aziraphale wails.

“Try the ‘Submit’ token, it’s,” Crowley scanned all over the document and started to hover his fingers over it until a ‘Submit' button appeared. “Yeah, tap that.” The angel tapped and then a next button was supplied.

“Why not just make it work the same on each question! I’d expect this sort of thing from your lot,” Aziraphale said, blue eyes flashing angrily. Crowley just shrugged in agreement.

“‘Question 3: How long have you served on Earth. (If in doubt round up to the quarter century)’. Well, that’s easy enough.” Aziraphale chuckled nervously. There was a terrible tension building as he expected the inevitable shoe to drop.

“Question 4: use the provided map to indicate the locations where you have served.’” When Aziraphale tapped a country it zoomed in until he had tapped every city and town he'd served in on the modern map. Once the modern map was complete, the next most recent map came into view. Aziraphale's hair was curling more fiercely than usual as he moved further and further back in time, “What was the name of that town in the oasis that dried up 4300 years ago?”

“The one with the date wine or the one that imported beer from Sumer?” asked Crowley as he watched the angel's fingers dance.

“Why aren’t you working on your memo?” Aziraphale accused, shaking his fingers out after completing question 4 and searching for the mechanism to unlock the next question.

Crowley grunted, “No point in putting it off any longer,” and started his memo.

“Doesn’t say how many questions, that’s ominous, but I’ve got a little progress bar! Let’s see: ‘Question 1: Name(s) or sigil.’” Crowley signed the parchment with a fiery snake and it automatically advanced to the next question and the progress bar filled in half way.

“You got halfway finished in the first question!” protested Aziraphale while an infinity sign rotated on his parchment as Question 5 loaded.

Twisting his head from side to side Crowley hissed, “I don’t believe that for a second! They’re trying to lull me into a false sense of security, you just wait,” he predicted darkly, staring warily at the parchment as cloudy shadows clarified into text.

“Ngk” Crowley gulped and swayed a tiny bit in his seat.

“What’s wrong?” Aziraphale reached out and touched Crowley lightly on the forearm to steady him.

“Ya know how I always said they didn’t really read the reports?” said Crowley, eyes roving over dense text.

“Yes, it always seemed that way from my people, too,” Aziraphale replied as a soft chime sounded from his memo, Question 5 had loaded.

“Oh dear,” breathed Aziraphale.

“Nnnggghh” whined Crowely.

Both of them read, and read, and read.

“They’ve read the reports!” Aziraphale said.

“ All the reports,” Crowley agreed, hoarsely.

“And they’ve got questions,” said Aziraphale.

“Very detailed questions,” said Crowley.

“And pointed,” Aziraphale said, sitting with more and more exact posture, hand drifting up to his lips.

“And nastily leading,” intoned Crowley, as he slouched deeper and deeper into the upholstered bench, head dropping back, still reading the parchment he was holding up to his eyes.

***

After a brief period of denial, “What would they do, really, if we don’t complete these? Surely, it’s just a low level scrivener made to be painstakingly thorough!?,” opined Aziraphale desperately to Crowley’s rising eyebrows and faintly shaking head.

Anger: “This is low even for them! ‘V done buggerall to keep up appearances and this is what I get!” snarled Crowley.

And mute staring into the distance while fingers tapped or drummed and serious, desperate cogitation took place.

They shifted at the same time, but Crowley broke the silence.

“What’s that you say about some of those books you like to read, angel? Poet permit?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale grumbled, “Poetic license. What are you suggesting, you old serpent?”

Crowley leaned forward again, tossing his parchment on the table next to the angel’s memo, and smiled conspiratorially, “We give ‘em a story! One they’ll like!” he gestured at the memos and their heap of secret journals. Leaning further forward he presses, “It’s what we’ve always done!”

“Crowley, how will that even work! You weren’t even there for some of those assignments, and I didn’t write down all the detail they’re asking for!” Aziraphale frowned.

Crowley waited quietly. leaning in with his head slightly turned and raising his eyebrows, waiting for the penny to drop.

Aziraphale’s face cleared as he said, “Oh!” and raised a finger, only trembling slightly with excitement bourne of wild hope.

“I’ll have to write some of yours, the assignments you weren’t actually there for,” said Aziraphale.

“And I’ll write some for you.” Crowley grinned, suddenly animated, “Hand it over, angel, we’ve got this!”

Aziraphale wrote feverishly on the demonic survey, “I’m going for a ‘brash and snide’ tone, but only to the point that you could actually pull it off.” Crowley looked over at the demonic memo in the angel’s hand while he worked on the angelic survey, “You really are a bit of a bastard, you know,” Crowley said approvingly, his coifed hair disheveled from the number of times he’d run a hand through it trying to draw out old memories.

Aziraphale flushed happily, he’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but not relaxed his bow-tie, there were standards to be kept! “And you certainly mastered ‘humble but forthright’ for mine!” Aziraphale gave a little smile with a touch of a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “You could pass for an angel.”

Crowley snorted, “I have passed for an angel. Just like you’ve passed for a demon. To humans.” Crowley said dismissively, “Swap out. You did this one.”

Aziraphale finished an entry and passed over the parchment, “Well, yes, but I just wanted to tell you, you’re doing a splendid job on the survey!”

***

The next day they stumbled out of the hidden room together and flopped onto the Chesterfield sofa.

“Alcohol,” moaned Crowley, eyes closed, from where his head was propped up on one corner of the couch while the rest of him oozed and pooled from there.

“And crepes,” sighed Aziraphale from where he was crumpled into the opposite side of the couch. His tie was still perfectly knotted but his hair was wild and what looked like sweat stains made dark moons under his arms. One of his tartan socks had gotten loose from a garter and slumped over his ankle.

“ With alcohol,” insisted Crowley, passing the angel a sky blue ice pack while he laid a jet black one onto his forehead.

“Paris?” Aziraphale said wistfully, holding the ice to the back of his neck.

“Paris,” Crowley agreed, sitting up and holding out a hand to the angel.

As they clasped hands, they took off to Paris for quite extraordinary amounts of crepes and alcohol, secure in the knowledge that they could craft the best stories together.

#good omens fanfic #short one shot #neil gaiman #ineffable husbands #ineffable idiots #fluff and humor #protective aziraphale #protective crowley #canon compliant #work humor #hell is a bureaucracy #heaven is a bureaucracy #promptfic #pre-Season 1 #aziraphale is a bit of a bastard #crowley good omens #aziraphale good omens

8 notes · View notes

averagejoesolomon · 1 year ago

Text

WELCOME TO THE KIDS. God, we are not ready for this installment, I'm so serious. Matt and Rachel are going to kill us all. To say nothing of the upcoming spycraft and general ass-kickery. Thank you for reading this with me. If you're new here, you can read Full Circle in full on Ao3. Enjoy!

Chapter Two

Before Matt boards a plane to New York, he pastes an OTS-issued mustache to his upper lip and switches the passports in his backpack.

There are no direct flights from Washington DC to Moscow. The reasons for this span far and wide, but the most significant factor also happens to be the simplest—sheer distance. At nearly five-thousand miles as the crow flies, there ain’t a whole lot of civilian aircraft that can make the flight in one go, to say nothing of the fact that neither country is especially amicable to the idea of direct contact. As part of a global effort to reduce the friction between two nuclear superpowers, Morocco offers up its services as the geographical and political buffer between the two destinations, its liminal and atmospheric nightlife acting as the ideal backdrop for the world’s transfers, layovers, and delays.

The trip usually takes eighteen hours if flown straight through, but the gin joints can eat into a full day if given the chance. For his part, Matt’s latest trip takes thirty-seven hours.

But he can’t blame the bars this time around because he doesn’t stop in Morocco, and hasn’t since he picked up a Soviet tail in the CMN terminal last spring. For every US intelligence agent flying through Casablanca, there are five Russian officers waiting on the ground with direct orders to identify and apprehend incoming westerners. The behavior has become too predictable. The Soviets have become too prominent. As Joe puts it: an agent in Morocco is an agent in the grave.

So Matt begins with a trip to New York, then London, then Istanbul, where he switches passports again to fly to Dubai, so he can finally make his way up to Moscow. He survives off of complimentary peanuts and ginger ale, stopping only at the occasional newsstand for the latest local headlines and a fresh packet of M&Ms—one of the few candies sold consistently across international borders. Vigilant airport hours are balanced with the relative safety of the sky, and his only sleep happens alongside the low, rattling drone of jet engines in his ear.

By the time he lands in the Soviet Union, he’s already added a goatee and traded his honey blond hair for a bleached wig that more closely resembles his newly assumed Slavic heritage. After deboarding, he identifies the nearest bathroom to the gate and enters the last stall on the left. As instructed by his CO, he runs his fingers along the wall until he finds a ridge in the tile. He carefully peels back a damn near invisible panel, revealing the compartment Langley promised him. There’s a change of clothes. A pair of contacts. A note written on evapopaper: E ibvltn aely ldrm oor we uti I. The key to this particular skip code was already given to him in New York, which helps him decipher the message that a driver will meet him in Lot 2. Thank God he doesn’t need to hail a taxi.

He drops the note into the toilet bowl and watches it melt from the edges inward. After changing into the provided outfit, he silently shreds his old travel clothes to be discarded in various trash cans on his way to the parking lot. Finally, he pops both contacts in, replaces the panel, and flushes the toilet in case anyone is listening. When he approaches the sink to wash his hands, unfamiliar blue eyes blink back at him from where his own brown eyes ought to be.

Between the sporadic sleep and the changing time zones, he has no idea what the local time is, but the dark sky narrows his possibilities to either very late or very early. The weight of travel saturates every muscle, every joint, every step, but he can’t afford to turn off his senses and slip lazily into the night—not in Moscow. Never in Moscow. After five consecutive flights in less than two days, the hard part has only just begun.

The Soviet Union has always been dangerous to western agents, but the capital has only gotten more hostile in Matt’s time as an operative. Last summer alone, ten US informants were executed in the city, including two of Matt’s most reliable contacts. In the following winter, a handful of Russian specialists left Langley for a field mission and didn’t come home. The last time Matt was here, he met with a Circle informant named Omar who offered to talk in exchange for medication not available in Russia, but easily acquired at a US pharmacy with a forged prescription. Omar is dead now, too, and Matt suspects an assassin finished him off before the illness did. These days, Moscow is a loaded spring trap ready to snap at the slightest tick in the wrong direction, deadly enough that even a skilled Pavement Artist stands to don a disguise or two.

Despite the ocean between them, Joe’s voice rings through Matt’s head. It’s always strongest in Moscow, imploring him to pay attention. Notice things. This is the sort of place where it’s best to lean into strengths, so Matt jumps in with the rest of the red-eyed passengers as the mob progresses through customs, down to baggage claim, and toward ground transportation. From his pace to his posture, he strives to put on a seamless Soviet appearance.

When he reaches the lot, he identifies a license plate number he was instructed to memorize, then enters the backseat of the boxy beige Lada. The driver doesn’t look back when he says, “Nice weather we’re having, yes?” in the sort of thick, Russian dialect that only natives can pull off.

Matt replies in his own practiced Russian. “I hear rain is imminent,” he says. “But I seem to have forgotten my umbrella at home.”

Satisfied with the exchange, the driver shifts gears and squeezes out of his parking spot, working his way toward the main city. By now, Matt knows the streets of Moscow as well as he knows the streets of Hay Springs, so he pays close attention to the route, just in case the driver has been compromised in the past forty-eight hours. The two of them do not speak, wary of bugs. They do not exchange glances, wary of pinprick cameras sewn into buttons. Instead, they embrace their existence as total strangers, not eager to leave any impression of an alliance.

This suits Matt just fine. That is, until seventeen minutes later, when the driver takes a right-hand turn away from the city center, then another.

In this business, in this part of the world, two right turns are a surefire signal to any veteran agent that something significant is about to happen, though it’s impossible to predict whether he’s looking at a positive or negative outcome until the moment actually passes. That’s probably why Joe’s voice is in Matt’s head again, anticipating the worst and providing Matt with escape plans.

The sidewalks look reasonably empty, easy enough to run.

The rear doors appear to be unlocked from the inside.

If the doors are jammed shut from the outside, Matt’s shoe has an iron wedge embedded in the rubber heel, which will help him kick through the window.

The driver isn’t armed, but if he makes a move for the glove box, Matt’s best option is to choke him from behind.

The little Lada pulls up to an alleyway tucked between high-rise apartments and a seemingly abandoned liquor store. There are no streetlights. No witnesses. The driver shifts the car into park and says, “You exit now.”

Risk assessment is a key component of any covert decision and, in that moment, Matt senses some serious risk waiting for him at the other end of that alleyway. At the same time, he also senses an even greater risk if he overstays his welcome with this native Russian driver who, by the way, has about a hundred extra pounds on him. Matt doesn’t need to be told twice. Hands up, he slowly exits the vehicle and prepares himself for the next piece of this rapidly evolving Moscow puzzle.

The instant Matt kicks the door shut and slings his bag back onto his shoulder, the Lada’s engine grinds into full gear with a squeal of the tires. He has officially run out of CIA instructions, but the good news is that he doesn’t have any time to doubt himself before his next priority makes itself apparent. The bad news is that his next priority should probably be to get away from the knife that was just pressed against his side.

The pointed end of the blade pokes along the muscle just above his hip. It hasn’t cut through his shirt yet, but one wrong move could change that and much more. “This is a nice surprise,” Matt says, sticking with Russian in a rushed attempt to keep his cover intact. “Where are we going?”

The answering Russian is good—excellent, even—but it has the subtle lilt of someone who learned it as a secondary language. “Is that all it takes to best you? One knife to the ribs and you roll over completely?” It’s a woman’s voice, and one of the few commonalities between the CIA and the KGB is the rarity of female agents among their ranks. Plus, the hold on the knife is petite and graceful, belonging to someone who was taught to fence before she was taught to fight. Matt decides he’s not up against a Soviet agent, but this ain’t a friend either. Not yet.

Joe’s voice is telling him to fight, but Matt’s curious enough to say, “In my experience, the person with the knife usually gets to make all the rules.” He continues with Russian, hoping that the woman will respond in kind and give him a chance to identify the accent layered below. “And, by the way, if you’re aiming for my ribs, you’re about two inches too low.”

She doesn’t disappoint. British accent, maybe. Or Australian. It really is impressively subtle. “Bold thing to say to someone with a knife to your side,” she says. “Remarks like that could get you killed.”

Matt huffs. “Maybe one day, but not today.”

She twists the knife a little deeper, pricking a hole in his shirt. “And what makes you so certain?”

“Because if you were going to kill me, ma’am,” he says, “I’d already be dead.”

This is a bit of a risky gamble. Few things make one human want to kill another more than spite, and Matt’s gone ahead and welcomed it with open arms. His mama always did say he had a real way about him, when it came to tempting fate. Thankfully, this particular bet seems to pay off as the knife finally falls away from his torso. The woman grabs him by the back of his collar instead, pulling him deeper into the alleyway. “You’ve taken all the fun out of it,” she says with a sigh. “Come with me. And don’t ever call me ma’am—that much will get you killed.”

This is a joke. He thinks. And jokes are awfully promising in a place like Moscow.

At the end of the alleyway, another car sits idling. No headlights. No plate lights. Matt can’t know for sure, but he reckons the brake lights are probably cut, too. In the presence of a car designed for a perfect covert getaway, Matt recognizes this moment for what it is—not an attack, but an escape. A high-tech game of keepaway.

In this particular instance, Matt is not an agent. Rather, he’s an asset in need of transportation, and he’s just met his new driver. When this stranger opens the rear door and shoves him inside, Matt knows that she’s putting on a show for potential onlookers. When she says, “Stay down,” he understands that his silhouette can’t be seen driving through the city. It is not enough to blend in—not when he could have a tail leftover from travel, not when the customs office could have bugged his backpack, not when a patrolman might recognize him from another visit into the city and assign a car to follow close behind. Agents have been known to disappear between an airport and a safe house, which means Matt is only safe if he becomes completely invisible. It’s the sort of thing that can only be accomplished with careful timing, meticulous planning, and an appreciation for redundancy, after redundancy, after redundancy.

In other words, this plan has Rachel Cameron written all over it.

He’s managed to avoid the thought for the past thirty-seven hours—and, frankly, for the entire two years before that—but the idea of being in the same city as Rachel after such a long time away has him wishing for a knife to his side instead. Knife wounds, at least, are an isolated pain with one clear source. They can be cleaned and stitched up. Bandaged and healed. This business with Rachel pings around all of his insides, taking turns with his stomach, his heart, his throat, his lungs. Rancid regret rots his brain and radiates down to every last muscle. Laying alone in the back of a stranger’s car, staring up at the velvet interior, Matt gets caught in a loop of all the things he wishes he’d said sooner.

He didn’t expect it to all stop.

He never should have made her cry.

He didn’t think it would last this long.

He lies, sometimes. He’s sorry he has to lie.

He’s doing good, good, good as often as he can.

Matt has always meant to say these things to her, but the longer they went without, the harder it got to call. Now it feels like too much time has passed to say any of it—like apologizing will only serve as a bitter reminder of just how deeply they tore into one another. Like acknowledging it will only reopen scars that have only just started to heal over.

The longer they drive, the more Rachel’s proximity presses down on his chest, squeezing him into the seat. He knows he ought to count the seconds. Track the turns. Try to get some sense of where they’re headed. But Rachel Cameron fills every last available space in his thoughts and, God almighty, she would lecture him straight to high heaven if she knew how distracted he was.

Once he’s fully worked himself up into a tightly wound ball of unspoken mistakes, the tires hit a gravel drive. The car takes an awfully long route over bumpy back roads and heavily forested hills, which is especially impressive given the lack of headlights, before it finally slows to a stop. His driver turns to the backseat, moonlight catching on the curve of her cheek, an icy white steak against smooth dark skin. “Congratulations on surviving your trip,” she says, and Matt thinks it might be an American southern drawl hiding beneath her Russian, with the way her vowels drawl. “You may leave. Your bag, however, must stay until morning.”

Matt sits upright, his silhouette visible to the night once more. “Sure thing,” he answers. “It’s like I said—the lady with the knife gets to make the rules.”

This earns him a subtle tick of the stranger’s lips. Matt latches onto the near smile and vows to turn into a broad, toothy grin sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, he’ll settle for the semi-charmed side-eye she casts his way, just before she opens the driver door. “Bloody Hell,” she says as she exits, finally switching to English. “She was right about you.”

British. Damn. Matt should have trusted his gut.

Wait.

He bolts out of the backseat and jogs to catch up. “Right about me?” he echoes, falling back into his own American English. “Who was right about me—right about what?”

The Brit’s stride is incredibly long, and would probably be better suited to a runway than barely-used backwoods paths overgrown with weeds. Matt has to quicken his own pace just to keep up with her. “Never you mind,” she says. “This way.”

“Doesn’t seem right,” he tries, “that you get inside info on me when I don’t even know your name—”

“This way,” she says again. “Surely I don’t have to remind you, of all people, that Moscow’s trees have ears.”

Matt has spent a significant portion of his career listening to conversations picked up by precisely placed bugs exactly like the ones she speaks of now. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her the surrounding trees probably aren’t bugged—at least not in the way she expects. The Soviets wouldn’t go to the trouble of tagging each individual tree, only to have an opposing agent uncover them within an hour of arrival. The birds, foxes, and deer, however, are worth a second glance.

Either way, she’s right. The forest is no place for introductions. Instead, he follows as she hikes toward a tiny cabin tucked between one hillside and another. It appears perfectly plain on the outside, built from cedar logs and a tin roof. Shrubs and pines surround the perimeter, and Matt knows from experience that these are probably prickly and unpleasant, making it difficult for any unwelcome guests to get too close. The curtains are drawn. The chimney is without smoke. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say no one was home.

They cover their tracks as they go, wordless right up until they reach the door. Mind split in the dozens of different directions demanded by good countersurveillance, Matt forgets to be nervous until the last minute, when the Brit knocks in a unique, four-rap pattern, then opens the door. The cabin’s light flashes into the nighttime forest, so they waste no time stepping inside.

A new voice greets them. Then again, this voice ain’t really new. Not to him. He’d know this particular voice anywhere, even if he spent years, decades, centuries away. “Grace?”

Rachel Cameron waits for them just inside, seated at a small dining table at the center of a small kitchen. Rachel Cameron has lists, and blueprints, and notes scattered all across the tabletop, the chairs, the linoleum, splayed across kitchen countertops, and taped to cabinets, and stuck to the refrigerator with little black magnets. Rachel Cameron scans one stack of papers with the pencil in her right hand, then another with a highlighter in her left. Rachel Cameron looks up. Rachel Cameron meets his gaze. Rachel Cameron sighs.

Genius. He’s always known the word applied to her, though it strikes him anew. Rachel’s brilliance is better experienced in small doses, when he can slowly acclimate himself to the raw appreciation of it. The last two years have robbed him of his resilience and it’s like he’s seeing her for the very first time all over again.

Except it only takes a single moment for all of their history to come rushing back, filling the room from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, until there’s no more space for words, or gestures, or glances. Rachel looks away first, eyes falling back to a set of blueprints, and Matt follows her lead.

Thankfully, their companion cuts through the silence without a trace of discomfort. “Found your boy,” she says, kicking off her shoes. “He’s cheeky, this one.”

Matt starts to protest with “Oh, I ain’t—” at the same time Rachel says, “He’s not my—”

They both stop, and wait, and wait some more. Neither of them meet the other’s eyes. When enough excruciating seconds have passed, Rachel starts again, and Matt lets her. “Thank you for picking him up,” she says. “I know you were eager to stay in tonight, but—”

“But we aren’t taking any chances with this op,” the Brit finishes. “Understood. Really, Rachel. Though I will say, I was a bit surprised at how easily this one came along with a complete stranger.”

It is as if all of Rachel’s years of etiquette training hit her at once. She brings her fingers to her forehead, suddenly remembering. “Ah, yes, sorry. You haven’t been introduced yet.”

“Not unless you count my putting a knife into his side,” she says.

Matt clears his throat, finally finding his words. “In this business, that’s sometimes the only introduction we get.”

The Brit smiles again. It’s still not the full grin he’s looking for, but it’s closer. “Quite right.”

Rachel studies the pair of them, analyzing something Matt can’t see. She squints back and forth between them, her face twisting into something sour, as though she’s not sure she likes what she’s looking at. “Right,” she says, slowly. Then, clears her throat. “Right, well, anyway. Grace, this is Matthew Morgan. Matthew, this is Grace Harris—”

“Baxter,” Grace cuts in.

“Right,” says Rachel, squeezing her eyes shut, remembering again. Matt’s not sure he’s ever seen Rachel forget anything, and he takes note of the fact that she’s gone and forgotten twice in a sixty-second span. A data point he’ll save for later. “Grace Baxter.”

Grace Baxter holds out her hand to shake, meeting Matt with a far firmer grip than he’s expecting. He feels a couple of knuckles pop in his own hand, and resists the urge to call out. “It’s so great to finally meet you,” she says.

That’s an awfully interesting choice of words. “Finally?” says Matt.

Grace does not elaborate. “My husband is around as well, but he’s being a good little agent and sleeping off his jet lag while it’s still dark.”

Matt, who hasn’t had more than two hours of consecutive sleep since DC, can’t quite hide the longing in his reply. “Smart man.”

“Outrageously so. It’s infuriating, really,” Grace agrees. “You’ll see him at breakfast tomorrow, but in the meantime we should all probably join him. The last thing we need is four exhausted agents trying to run an op in Moscow.”

Matt has about a million more questions for Grace Baxter, but none of them form quite right in his head. A fog fills his brain, clouding all of his better thoughts, and he reckons Grace is probably right. He’s useless to Rachel like this, and she’ll be the first to call him on it. “Sounds like a plan to me,” he says. “Do you think we ought to run it by the boss, first?”

Grace risks a glance toward Rachel, who has already returned to one of her blueprints. With Rachel’s attention occupied, Matt steals this chance to take her in. Her clothes are worn with travel and her shoulders slump with a need for sleep. Some of her curls have escaped the denim scrunchie holding back the bulk of her hair, falling into her face, and Matt remembers all at once that Rachel never did know how to stop, once she got started.

“Good luck,” Grace scoffs. “I’ve been trying to get her to sleep for hours. Maybe you can talk some sense into her. She’s been planning since the moment she walked in.”

Matt ain’t got any sense that Rachel doesn’t already have ten times over, and he doesn’t dare pretend otherwise. Thankfully, Rachel recognizes this and provides an answer of her own. “I’ve been planning for the past three months,” she corrects, just as she circles something on the page. “I just wanted to get some last-minute changes down before bed.”

Grace turns back to Matt. “You see? Hopeless,” she says. “You two may do what you please, but I intend to get some sleep. Pulling off a fake kidnapping at the edge of Moscow is exhausting work, you know.”

With this, she sends a playful jab into Matt’s side. Only problem is, Grace’s idea of a playful jab is most people’s idea of a full-on elbow to the ribs, and Matt has to catch his breath afterward. It takes all of his might not to let out an unmanly yelp in front of these two women. “Right,” he gasps. “See you in the morning.”

“Thanks again, Grace,” Rachel calls, not looking up from her writing.

With a wave of her fingers, Grace disappears behind one of the two available doors and shuts it with a twist of the lock. Matt realizes too late that her absence leaves just him and Rachel. Alone. Together.

This silence just won’t do.

“Flights good?” he asks.

“Yes,” she answers, scribbling away.

“Abby okay?”

Scribble, scribble. “Yes.”

“You okay?”

Scribble, scribble. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason.” This is worse than the silence, actually. Out of questions and energy stores depleted, Matt decides that his only remaining move is one that has been employed by desperate agents for centuries—a retreat. “Listen, I think I might join the others and try to get some sleep. Unless you need me?”

Scribble, scribble. “Not yet.”

“Great,” he says. “Just point me to my bed and I’ll be on my way.”

Rachel’s pencil freezes mid-sentence. This is Matt’s first clue that something is horribly wrong, followed by the fact that her eyes finally meet his and this time, she doesn’t look away. “No.”

“Um.” Retreat, retreat, retreat. “Okay? I guess I can find it—”

But Rachel is already up, dashing through the sliver of a living room that hosts a single chair, a coffee table, and a throw blanket. When she reaches the second available door in the cabin, blood drains from her already pale face, turning it to an alarming, ashen white. Her voice is hollow and distant when she squeaks out a soft, “No, no, no.”

When it comes to Rachel, Matt is woefully out of practice, but it doesn’t take an expert to see the panic, and Rachel’s panic ain’t built the same way everyone else’s is. The sight of Rachel out of sorts is enough to get Matt’s heart really, truly racing. “Rachel, what are you—?”

She flicks on the light, and when Matt steps up behind her, he’s met with an instant understanding of the situation. “There’s only one other bed,” she says, spinning to face him as she explains. “Abby and I usually share. I booked the safe house when it was going to be the two of us, but between the hospital, and the flights, and coordinating our assets…” Sometimes Matt wonders how loud the inside of her head must be. He suspects she doesn’t realize when her words dissolve between inner and outer monologue. It takes some deciphering to understand her complete thoughts from start to finish. “I forgot. I’m so sorry, I forgot to account for the beds when I switched agents, I’ll take the couch.”

By couch, he supposes she means the ancient loveseat tucked away at the end of the bed. The leather cushions are scratched and cracked, and the silver shine of a spring peeks out from beneath the quilt laid across its back. A grease stain rests along the arm where agents have laid their heads for years and years before. Throughout his travels, Matt has seen more than his fair share of uncomfortable furniture and this one has serious potential to rank among the worst, but this is Rachel’s third strike at forgetfulness when she’s usually a home run hitter. She needs to sleep, and sleep well, and it simply won’t do, for her to sleep on that old thing. “I’ll take the couch.”

“No it’s my mistake, I should—”

“Rachel,” he says, and his hands fall to her shoulders out of habit. Out of familiarity. “I’m sorry, but there just ain’t no way I’m letting you take the couch.” She’s looking up at him with big, brown eyes. They’re glassy, and tired, and he spares Rachel her dignity by ignoring the twinge of tears sneaking into either corner. “She may be all the way in Nebraska now, but there’s no quicker way to get Joy Morgan to Moscow than if I let you sleep on that couch.”

She shakes her head. “Matthew—”

“I’m telling you,” he tries again. “My mama can sense that sorta thing, and believe me when I say she’ll shake down the entire agency to find this cabin and knock me six ways from Sunday, right upside my head.”

“You’re worried that your mother will intimidate CIA agents into disclosing the location of one of their most heavily protected safe houses?”

“You’ve never seen my mama when there’s a matter of chivalry at stake.”

“Matthew, I—” she interrupts herself, this time, freezing when she meets his gaze. “Your eyes,” she says, studying the intimate features of his face. “Your eyes are blue.”

This is outright nonsense, and even more proof that she needs to sleep. That is, until he remembers the light blue contacts. He blinks, as though he might be able to get rid of the color, because everything artificial seems so ridiculous now that he’s in the presence of someone who knows him to his core. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, sorry.”

With that, she studies him more deeply, and he notices the faint lines that have started to form where her eyebrows always furrow, the freckles she’s accumulated along her cheekbones with years of missions spent in the sun, the ease with which her lips fall into a tight, even line. Her eyes bounce between each of his, debating her next words before she finally says, “Why are you apologizing?”

Matt’s breath catches, and he knows this is it. The opening he’s been waiting for. But it’s late, and they’re tired, and they both smell like planes, and airports, and taxis. So despite the desperate words trying to crawl from his heart to his mouth, he settles on something softer. “I think we both know I’ve got plenty to apologize for,” he says, finally letting his hands fall. “But I think we both know this ain’t the time to do it.”

Genius. She’s always been smarter than him in more ways than he can count, and this moment is no exception. She’s smart enough to know that they both need clearer heads. That they both need a moment of quiet. That morning will come and they’ll both be better for it, and that tonight is no place for their usual fights. “I’m sorry I didn’t think about the bed,” she says, barely more than a whisper. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I know you didn’t—”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“I know you aren’t.”

“I’m so tired.”

She has this way of taking small words and making them feel big. Of making them span years, when they shouldn’t last more than a second or two. Rachel isn’t tired, so much as she’s exhausted, and burned out, and lonely, and weighed down—and she manages to convey all of this by simply shaking her head, and folding her face into her hands, and standing in front of him with all of the humility in the world.

He has this way of feeling her when she most needs it, in a way that no one else seems to be able to. Of hearing those great big words tied up in all of her small ones, and trying his best to say the right thing in response. “Let’s get some sleep, then,” he says, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world. “We’ll get some sleep, and when you wake up, you can tell me exactly what all of those crazy kitchen plans mean.”

Despite herself, she laughs. It's a pitiful, mangled thing, but it still counts. “They’re not as crazy as they look.”

And Matt can’t hold back a smile. “Well thank God for that, because they look…” he tries to find a word, but this is much like everything else Rachel does, in that it defies explanation. “I mean, seriously, Rachel, you’ve gone full Doc Brown in there.”

She shoves him, gently, and Matt makes a show of clasping at his chest in faux hurt. “They’ll make more sense in the morning,” she tells him.

“Everything will make more sense in the morning,” he assures her.

And she believes him. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” he says.

That’s enough for them, for tonight, for now. It’s all they need. And maybe tomorrow will be bitter and hard at the center of Moscow, working an op that Rachel has given her whole heart to, but right now is easy and safe. Right now, they’re old friends who need each other more than they knew.

Rachel finds his eyes again, and sighs something that sounds like relief and regret mixed together. “At least let me ease some of my guilt by hunting down a truly outrageous number of blankets on your behalf.”

Matt looks back to the loveseat and knows in his gut that there will not be enough room for more than one blanket. There is barely enough room for Matt, as is. Even so, he smiles at her. “Rachel Cameron,” he says. “I’ll always take any blanket you hand me.”

#Full Circle

13 notes · View notes