#warning: as I wrote this in blurb format I used some 40’s terminally for gay preferences ok? read it in that spirit

[therealslimshakespeare]

That’s the thing! How does Gale react to it? We know he has objections (ignoring which is a bad thing to do -thats obvious) but I always was under impression that he was fond of her and would welcome a lot more of her advances if it wasn’t for their situation (first army protocols and later on stalag). Her ignoring or dismissing his boundaries is not a good thing to do, but it’s clearly not as easy as it may seem. They end up in love, there must be something there to build upon (even if it’s not easy due to their respective traumas). If they are able to build rather happy life post war that speaks volumes on how well they must end up understanding one another (because we must remember that this is a generation which was denied proper therapeutic care and were expected to just move on from killing people on daily or being tortured to being stand up civilians, mothers and fathers. On top of pre existing traumas connected to often lacking parenting care). So my question is how does Maureen end up opening up to Gale about her past, both her traumas and her own wrongdoings and how does he take it? And how much she reveals (purposefully or not) to the rest of the crew?

Excellent points all and the questions posed here are totally on my list of things to be woven into fics because they’re essential for their story making any sense, ya know? So, love this.

First off. One hint we have in Gale’s POV (in First Night) is that from the first time he saw her in the nose of Our Baby, he adored her nose. Tiny detail, doesn’t mean he was in love, doesn’t mean he was asking for a hand in his lap. But as we will learn, Gingerale had a rather startling attraction to her right away.

Why was it startling? Because Gale Cleven hadn’t felt attracted to a woman since…well, couldn’t remember when.

Not strongly, at least. It had been sometime early in highschool when a dreaded presentment settled over him that he was odd, and that worsened into knowing he was outright queer by college.

No like really. He liked men. In that way.

And that wasn’t something he was going to pursue, not if he was gonna rise up in the world, make a better run of it than his daddy. But it was something to acknowledge and he had to finally. Then he moved on.

And then he met Bucky, and he almost wanted to think Bucky felt the same hot gut devotion he did, but Bucky was like that with everyone.

Including a new girl named Candy. Or Maureen, to be proper. She was a new girl among many new girls who came flooding in with the war on. And Gale got along with all of them just fine. Used to them all, used to the batting eyelashes or the pink cheeks, the slipped phone numbers and the not so subtle attempts to bump into him in a corridor. He was used to that.

Plenty of them were really capable. Shockingly so. Among them, Kendeigh.

What he wasn’t used to was being watched by a woman across the bar, being hunted down by her, laughed over his stringent lack of alcohol, have her buy him a Gingerale, call him by the same name in a voice that suggested nothing good, like she knew he wasn’t as good as he pretended anyway. He felt a hot gut longing for that.

If only they’d met before all this. Before he was her Major and she was feuding with the new Lady Colonel over being demoted to bombardier. She was ferocious in her own way, very good at getting a party going, could make anyone forget how many folks they’d lost in a practice crash last week. She was good to have around. He asked if she might get put as his bombardier when they shipped out.

There weren’t any objections. He almost wished there were, to knock some sense into him for wanting to keep her so near. It diluted all his half hearted protests to the contrary. But soon she wasn’t just a a friend, someone to help wrangle and occupy Bucky, she was also his deputy. As missions got worse and the stakes got higher, he needed someone like that. When Curt went down, she felt like the closest thing left. It was her and Benny, and it felt wrong to have both eggs in one basket, as it were, but he wanted them with him all the same.

That’s a brief, but rather long all the same, fly over of my vision for some this.

One other addition: Maureen has a gay brother. One of those Ivy League homosexuals who wasn’t at all out but lord knows he wasn’t in either. And she knew it. Liberal in many ways, she accepted it, easily, and didn’t think much of sniffing another out when she found one. Much to Gale’s horror and then relief. It’s a dangerous to admit to a woman he’s not sure he fully likes, even if he rather adores her. But what she does with that trust -it’s like watching a flower bloom.

She’s oddly touched by it. Almost rises to the occasion under it. And for Gale, it’s good to be known.

Having that aspect known, by the time he gets to the stalag, goes through what he’s been through, proceeds to go through more once there —Maureen already knowing some of the most intimate details about him, he can’t manage to fully push her away when he begins to spiral. Meanwhile she is on a learning curve about how on earth to help. Since all the selfish ways she used to extract his attention would only be harmful and -selfish. And she rises to that occasion. She does it for Brady, too. And might be the only one tangibly keeping those two men’s morale’s afloat.

You can imagine after all that, how utterly ingrained and intertwined they are by time of liberation.

Before then. Before Gale leaves her behind in the escape. She tells him she loves him. And I think she tells him more. Now she’s learned there is a more to her story.