Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

It never is, sure, but this was never supposed to end in blood and pain. A simple recon mission to a clearly abandoned ship, to see if there was anything to get from that ship and then it turned into a goddamn suicide mission.

She’s still not quite sure what happened but suddenly there was a boom and a lurching and a couple smaller booms and suddenly she was alone with Major Lorne. An unconscious Major Lorne. He must have hit his head when one of the smaller explosions had rocked the ship and they’d been cut off from both the bridge and the hatch they came through.

She remembers being hit in the side, too but apart from having the wind knocked out of her once and then a bit of queasiness afterwards she’s fine. And all she can do now is sit next to Major Lorne, take care that he doesn’t suddenly throw up and choke on his vomit and wait. Laura Cadman was never good with waiting.

It’s not that she’s freaking out – because Lieutenant Laura Cadman does not freak out – but she’s starting to get… restless. Her wrist chrono broke some at some point between the fourth and fifth time she bumped against a wall during an explosion and she can only guess for how long she’s been sitting here, hearing the ship around her creak and hiss and if she’s not mistaken, they’re trundling through space, with no way whatsoever to contact Atlantis. She estimates them stuck here for about thirty minutes.

Fuck, she thinks, if at least they’d get to a radio or to the bridge to stop the trundling or at least had a way of knowing how much oxygen they still have left. Or if fucking Major Lorne would just fucking wake up because seeing him lying there all still – she tells herself the only reason she’s leaning towards him and putting a hand under his nose now and then is that it’s part of first aid training to check for signs of breathing – is starting to make her feel… desperate.

Okay, maybe not desperate but if she could at least get moving, she’d feel a lot better. She’d be able to ignore the dull pain in her left side because she’d have something to do, something to occupy her, something to make her believe Atlantis is just an FTL jump away.

And she’d stop being worried sick about the guy who’s her superior like he was something entirely else. It’s not like there’s anything between them and it’s not like she’d actually want that but honestly, if he’d just wake up and order her around or at least try to create some plan with her, she could go back to convincingly tell herself he’s a just a superior.

God, that really… “Cadman?”

Oh. Oh, huh…

“Cadman… you alright?”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

She takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain that just got a little more intense. Just a bruise, she thinks. You’re not going to trouble him over something as insignificant as that. She rolls her head to the side, angling for a deadpan look. “I didn’t get a bump to the head, sir.”

His reaction is shaking and sounding like he’s coughing… oh, wait, he’s laughing. That’s… a good thing, right? “I can’t believe you… holy shit.” What… In a moment, she scooted over so that she’s sitting next to him when he’s clutching his head. “Holy shit mother of all headaches…” And just like that he leans away from her, retching his heart out. Amazingly fast thinking on his part, she’s got to give him that.

Not that it helped make her cease worrying, though. Headache, vomiting… definitely a concussion. “Sir, are you…”

“Fine, yes. Pretty sure this is a concussion. Not even really bad one, I think.” Oh since when did you become a doctor, she nearly asks but he seems to have read her thoughts anyway. “I can still see straight, no double images and I know exactly what happened before I blacked out, despite the headache. Trust me on this, Lieutenant.”

She doesn’t, which has nothing to do with her not accepting his authority and everything with the very bad feeling that suddenly starts to pool in her stomach. Something about this, she thinks, is going to go horribly wrong. Which is kind of ironic since until now she’d thought it couldn’t get much worse than being stuck on a ship out of control with only her concussed CO as company.

“Lieutenant?” She looks back at him. “Think you’re up for trying to find a way out of this debris?”

“Sure, sir,” she says and gets up carefully. She checked herself for any outward injuries earlier but mindful of Carson’s warning that you couldn’t trust your body until you didn’t try it out in every position you needed to complete the mission.

Okay, so he didn’t say it exactly like… argh. “Lieutenant?” Shit, the stupid bruise is suddenly giving her some real trouble, making her bend forward and brace a hand on the wall next to her. “Cadman, are you okay?”

For a guy with a concussion, Lorne’s startlingly fast on his feet all of a sudden. “I’m… it’s just…” God, that hurts. Enough that she doesn’t even fully realize for a moment that Lorne caught her in his arms, awkwardly embracing her to keep her upright.

“Where does it hurt, Lieutenant?” Everywhere? is the first thing she wants to answer but the pain is still taking away the breath she’d need for speaking, so she simply leans against him, pressing her face into his shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut and her breathing labored until she can locate the source of the pain.

“Left…” she takes another breath, not quite able to believe how hard it suddenly seems, “left side. Just a… bruise.”

“Don’t think so, Lieutenant.” Only marginally she realizes that he’s gently lowering her on the floor again, her back resting against the wall. When she hears him mumble “Sorry, Lieutenant.” she’s confused what exactly he’s sorry for but then she feels him opening her tac vest and she has to bite her tongueso that she doesn’t scream when he makes a particularly jarring move against her side. Then he very, very gently pushes up her uniform shirt. All she hears is a nearly swallowed gasp.

At that, she opens her eyes, wondering why her lids feel so heavy all of a sudden. What she sees in his face… “That bad, huh?”

In a corner of her mind that’s still strangely untouched by all that pain and queasiness, she wonders if he’s ever been as open as book as right now. Despite the haze of hurt that’s starting to overtake her thinking process, she can see clearly that he’s at war with himself, until he finally settles with, “I don’t think that’s just a bruise, Laura.”

She blinks. He never called her Laura before. They’ve been on a lot of missions together, been serving in Atlantis for more than three years, shared a lot of gate control room shifts, saw each other at nearly every rec event during all those years… and he never called her Laura before. For some reason, that’s the only thing really making it into her brain.

Until her mind latches unto that other thing he mentioned. She tries to smile. “Looks worse than it feels.”

“Laura…” He did it again. She hazily wonders why that is. “I’ll have to…”

“Oh God.”

“I’m sorry, really, I…” Even with all the pain his slight touch to her left side caused, she’s still somehow able to detect the somewhat panicky note in his voice. She thinks he sounds as if he’d been hurt. “I’m not… Carson but I did listen to his anatomy lessons and that… that doesn’t look good. If I’d had to hazard a guess… I think you might have hurt your spleen.”

Huh? Since when did he become… oh right, anatomy lessons for off-world qualified personnel. Yeah, she remembers those, too. “Evan…”

Shit.

But it just slipped out and… “What is it?”

“I don’t… feel so good.” She really doesn’t. Until a few seconds ago, it had just been the pain but now there’s also dizziness and sweat and she’s starting to feel cold, so cold… so…

Something strange happens. Had he been professional until now – except that thing with her first name – there’s now some strange look in his face, his eyes, something urgent and shocked that’s not exactly helping to make her feel better. She thinks she never saw that kind of look in his face before. This just can’t be good.

“No.” Huh? Just that one single word and why is he suddenly… hugging… why… “You are not going to die today, Laura.” Well, no, she hadn’t planned on this exactly and… “Not before I… before we…” She feels him embracing her, hugging her close to him and in a way it’s a good thing that she can’t feel more pain than she already does because he’s embracing her really tight and it’s not like she doesn’t give her best to do the same to him. “Not today, Laura.”

She hears him whispering close to her ear and confusing grips her. Confusion at his tone and the conviction and all that will in his voice and she tries to grip him harder, presses her lips to his shoulder, tries to tell him that she’s got that deep, deep desire to do her best, that she will not disappoint him, not before she hasn’t found out what he means with “Before I…” and…

“Fuck, you’re as white as a sheet and… there’s not even a real pulse…” She wonders at that. She’s still alive and she tries to tell him so but he’s not listening anymore, he’s moving her again and after a few painful, labored minutes, she can see the ceiling above her, spinning. “Listen to me, Laura, don’t fall asleep. There’ll be help soon because we’re past our check-in time…”

Help? She’s not so sure now if that will be of any use. She can hear Carson in her head, telling them what happens once someone with internal bleeding goes into shock. There’s dizziness and nausea and tiredness, so, so much tiredness… “Do not fall asleep on me, Lieutenant, that’s an order.”

She tries to smile at him, tries to say something but somehow, her lips and tongue won’t obey her anymore. There’s his face above hers now, starting to blur but she can see his pain and hurt and still hear him, why can she still hear him say, “Hold on, just a little while longer. I just… don’t go, Laura. Don’t go. They’ll be here, any minute now…”

Tired. She’s so, so tired and she wants to sleep, just sleep and the black is creeping into her vision, just as she hears him say, “Colonel Sheppard? Sir? Did you bring… Lieutenant Cadman… shock… slipping into…”

And everything fades and fades and fades away…

Chapter Text

Come to Spain, his superior officer had said to him. Fight for the Republic, his superior officer had said to him. Do the right thing, his superior officer had said to him.

And here he is, trudging through the light dusting of snow – snow, in fucking Spain – on the road to Teruel that’s not more than a dirt path, freezing his ass off in the rags he swathed himself in and wondering why the everloving hell he listened to Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard and followed him to a Spain ravaged by civil war.

It’s time like this when he’s questioning his sanity for following Sheppard through hell and back without a blink and the stares he sends at Sheppard’s back would probably have put several holes in him, were they bullets. He just hopes Dr. Weir doesn’t see them because for some reason the good doctor seems to have some incurable obsession with getting people to make peace with each other.

Also, she clearly has something going on with Sheppard and he suspects it probably started on the ship that brought all three of them plus a couple other American volunteers for the International brigades to France in late 1936. They’re discreet, he’s got to give them that but the three of them have been on the road for over a week now with only each other as company and it’s not like he’s blind. Or deaf, for that matter.

Then again, the reason that they’re lagging behind the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, their main unit, is that they’d been detached to pick Weir up from an aid station of those Falangistas that she’d been forced to work for after having been captured a few weeks before in a raid they’d made on Weir’s last assignment. He’d have been thoroughly alarmed if Sheppard and Weir hadn’t shown any attachment whatsoever after that.

And anyway… “Ditch,” he hears Sheppard suddenly hiss and in the twilight he can see the silhouette of something big on the road. He wastes no time and scrambles down into the ditch next to the dirt road and only his years as an officer of the United States Army prevent him from swearing very loudly. There’s nothing so asqueroso* as suddenly having your ice cold feet surrounded by ice cold water.

There’s a warning look from Sheppard that he just answers with rolling his eyes and jerking his head toward the structure on the road they saw ahead. After Sheppard throws Weir a short look that she just confirms with a nod, they make their way forward, careful not to make any noise. Inch by inch… until they hear someone swearing in an impressive array of languages. Very, very loudly.

They’re about two yards behind the structure – a positively ancient ambulance car, probably left over from the Great War or something – when Sheppard gestures to Weir to stay here and to him to take the car’s right sight. Slowly they climb out of the ditch and he lightly presses his back against the car’s right side and inches forward.

Just before he’s about to reach for the door, he slowly moves to chamber a round in his M1911 handgun and almost winces at the too audibly loud click. Hoping Sheppard does the same on the other side, he moves to open the car’s door with his left hand, his gun ready to level into whoever’s face… and suddenly he’s seeing stars and pain explodes in his eye and…

La puta madre.*

For a moment, the only thing he notices is that his world just turned upside down and that he’s looking up at the darkening sky. Until he realizes that something ways him down and there’s… hair whipping into his face and… someone pummeling his fucking chest.

Still having no idea what the fuck just happened he moves the M1911 his right hand still miraculously grips up to bring it down on the furious face staring at him and spitting insults at him to just make it stop but for some reason he will probably never be able to fathom, he sometimes has his arms around his assailant and since he’s lucky enough to realize what’s going on, he moves to tighten them, keeping his attacker close and rolling him around on the ground on his back…

It’s a girl.

It’s a fucking chica he’s got under him and who’s staring daggers at him and wriggling around, obviously trying to get rid of him. Her face is smudged all over with dirt and her hair is all tangled up but it’s unmistakably a girl he’s got pinned to the ground. She keeps trying to shake him off and he’s got to admire her endurance if nothing at all.

Then he suddenly gets her fist to his temple and honestly, that’s enough. He forces her arms above her face, leaning down until his face is only a few inches away from hers and growls, “Basta ya, brujita.”* And then he notices that her eyes are brown, hazel really, and the distraction of thinking how odd that is for a ginger nearly gets him knocked out by the ginger he neatly pinned to the ground a moment ago.

In the end, though… it’s Dr. Weir who saves him by saying, “Evan… I think she’s American.” It makes both him and the girl pause.

He blinks and stares at the girl that stares back at him in a way no American girl ever stared at him in his 35 years; defiant, fierce, even with a feral edge. It’s so prominent that it nearly overshadows a glimmer in her eyes, or maybe rather a shadow, something that makes them look old and in his bewilderment, he lets go of her arms.

Lethal mistake.

In a matter of seconds, she did something to flip him off her, jumped up and… finds a TT-33 squarely pointed at her face. And here Weir had refused to wear a gun for several months after coming into the country, claiming she was a pacifist. He throws Sheppard a short look from his position on the ground but Sheppard just gives him a minute shake of the head, continuing to point his M1911 at the girl. If this weren’t so damn serious, he’d laugh his ass off about that parody of a Western-ish standoff.

As it is… he gets a nice view of the girl’s backside… and a leather holster on her right hip with the butt of a semi-automatic sticking out of it. Jesus H. Christ, he could have been dead by now. He could be…

Dr. Weir obviously decided to take the lead again, loosening one hand from the grip around her gun and stretching it out in a pacifying gesture, palm out, “Listen, Miss, I don’t want to…”

“Give me back that notebook.” If anything, that girl’s no coward. Ordering around the woman who’s pointing a gun at her certainly took guts. Or a very special brand of insanity. Remembering what he saw in her eyes just a moment ago… well.

For a moment, he wondered what she meant when Weir carefully moves her free hand to grab behind her, towards the seat inside the car and he realizes that during his struggle with the girl, she and Sheppard must have used to the time to secure the car. He half expects the girl to jump forward and tackle Weir but for some reason, she stays where she is, her whole stature almost frozen.

Weir pulls her hand forward again, with a tattered little book in it and holds it out to the girl, taking down her gun a notch that he thinks is pretty much unwise. “Listen, we don’t want you anything bad. We’re on our way to Teruel, just passing through and we were just being cautious.”

“How do I know you’re not going there to support the fascists?” Because they’re deep enough into Republican territory that they’d have to be very suicidal fascists, he nearly reminds the girl but a warning look from Sheppard tells him to let Weir handle this.

The good doctor, in turn nods. “You’re right, you can’t.” Oh great, why don’t you just handle her the ammunition she… “You’ll have to trust us.” It’s just getting better and better.

“Why aren’t you with the Lincoln-Washington in Aragon if you aren’t part of the bad guys?” Good question, actually.

“We had business to attend to before we could go to Teruel.” Ah, and now Sheppard decided to join into the conversation. He wishes he wouldn’t have.

Because that just seemed to have made the girl more distrustful. “What kind of business?”

“Ours.” Typical Sheppard answer and before he knows it, a snort escaped him and… yeah, of course now everyone is looking at him and he takes that moment of broken tension to pick up his ass from the frozen ground.

Everyone is still looking at him and he wonders what’s so interesting about him. Anyway, now that they’re all looking at him, maybe they’ll also listen to him. “How about we just agree not to shoot each other for a moment so we can solve this like civilized people, huh?”

That seems to amuse Weir because she obviously can’t hide a smile. The girl – God, it’s high time to do an introduction since he possible can’t go on calling her “the girl” any longer – looks at him like she thinks he lost his mind and Sheppard seems ready to groan… but then the ginger brujita says, “I’m pretty sure civilized people is the one thing you won’t be able to find here.”

He’s pretty sure it was supposed to sound flippant or maybe joking but it came out with a hint of cynicism, an edge of something someone her age – he thinks her to be around her mid-twenties – shouldn’t know about. He wonders where she’s been with her ambulance car in this war to sound like that.

It is, however, Weir again who surprises him. “Two years ago I was a doctor in a hospital in the Philippines.” Huh, what… “I’m Dr. Elizabeth Weir. This here is John Sheppard. He used to command a US Army unit in Guam, with Evan Lorne over there as his second in command. We came here because we wanted to help the Republicans against Franco. John and Evan were on their way to Teruel when they received the message that… they needed to take care of something else first.”

“That business you mentioned?” The girl still looks wary of all of them but he thinks some of the tension in her body has gone.

Weir nods. “Yes. Now… who did we have the honor to meet?”

There’s an interesting transformation in the girl from wary over hesitant to an obvious attempt at some higher level civility when she extends her hand to Weir and says, “Laura Cadman. I was supposed to ferry that piece of… that car over to Teruel from Albacete but it broke down a few minutes before you came around.”

He does notice that she never told them what she did before she came here but then again, everyone’s entitled to their secrets. As long as they don’t kill him, that is. But somehow he has a feeling that her secrets are rather killing her.

“So you’re an ambulance driver?” Weir asks and it really is amazing how the girl… Miss Cadman seems to react to her.

“Yes, ma’am.” Interesting response. Then she looks closely at them. “But if you were hoping to hitch a ride…”

“No, we’d understand if you…”

“…you’ll all have to give me a hand with that man-of-war behind me.” Sheppard, Weir and he must have all have the same idea since he sees the confusion he feels. Miss Cadman must have seen it, too. “What? I could use a hand and if anyone wants to try something, I know how to handle a Browning HP.”

There probably was supposed to be levity and a bit of sarcasm and there was… almost burying a hardness that tells him she didn’t came here yesterday. He’s starting to be very, very glad that Weir and Sheppard are handling this because something about this Miss Cadman doesn’t sit right with him.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust her, it’s just that… she’s young and American and her accent sounds like she’s from somewhere around the D.C. area. She shouldn’t look older than she most probably is and sound harder than the usual young American woman from the D.C. area. For some reason, that’s more than he can deal with right now, right here. Something in him he hasn’t felt for a long time – since his divorce five years ago, to be precise – stirs when he looks at her. He chooses not to think about that too closely.

“Lorne?” Huh? “When you’re done gathering wool, how about you start helping Miss Cadman there with seeing what exactly’s wrong with her car?” Err… what? “Your dad owns a garage. I’m sure you picked up a thing or two from him. Now get moving.”

Oh of course. His father owns a garage in a San Francisco suburb, so he must be an experienced car mechanic and… and there’s no way he’ll get out of this now, judging from Sheppard’s look. He nods, glad that the twilight and the beret he’s wearing help to conceal what he’s thinking right now. “Yes, sir.”

So he trudges over to the car’s now open hood, registering that the car is a British model by glancing into the cab. Just fucking great. British, ancient and… “I don’t need your help.” Even better. He glares at her.

“You don’t even know if I’m here to help…”

“Didn’t you listen to what I just said? I. Don’t. Need. Your. Help.” Of course she’d say that. And of course she’d keep saying that. She’s a young woman on her way from Albacete to Teruel, all on her own, with only a Browning HP and a Lee-Enfield he’d seen lying on the passenger seat as protection. She probably needs to tell herself she’s got everything under control constantly.

“Look, I’m here because my superior officer just ordered me to…”

“Are you being deliberately stupid, Sunshine Boy? I just said I don’t need your help,” yes, he heard that and… “And if you’d let me finish my line, I could tell you that I don’t need your help because this car officially surrendered to the cold. There’s nothing we can do to get it running again before nightfall and trust me, you don’t want to be sitting in that thing when I’m driving it over a dirt road in the dark.”

Good God. That’s probably the longest speech he ever heard from a woman he just met. He tries to say something but his throat feels strangely dry and he finds himself clearing his throat for a second attempt but before he can get his tongue to obey him, Sheppard’s back, looking first at him, then at the motor and then at Miss Cadman. “So, no chance we’ll get anywhere right now, Miss Cadman?”

He’s pretty sure Miss Cadman just rolls her eyes at that, then she turns around to Sheppard and tells him with a kind of tried patience in her voice, “No, sir, we won’t. I’ve got two cots and a couple blankets in the back so we shouldn’t freeze to death tonight. I can’t give you a ride right now, but I could manage shelter.” Why is it, he wonders, that Sheppard gets tried patience and he gets hostility?

Sheppard nods at that and appoints him as first watch. They decide to put the guard into the driver’s cabin and agree on a regular intervals of getting out and checking for anything unusual. Since for some reason he has the strong desire for some quiet and peace but just knows he won’t be able to sleep anyway, he volunteers for first watch and after some fussing around with cots and blankets, he’s left with nothing to do but stare into the night that has finally fallen and try to stay warm in his layers of ragtag uniform and sodden boots.

Unfortunately for him, it’s a silent night, so he’s left with only himself for company for several hours which is never a good thing. In fact, by the end of his watch, he’s ready to admit that he’s terrible company and being allowed in the back and able to change out of his boots and socks isn’t the only reason he’s mighty relieved when he hears Sheppard tap against the window next to him.

Wordlessly, they change stations and he trudges around the ambulance’s back. He climbs in and the first thing he does when he closed the door behind him is the aforementioned getting out of the blasted boots and socks and it’s such a relief to be wearing something dry again that at first he doesn’t realize that Miss Cadman isn’t lying on one of the cots and that a strange sound is filling the room.

He blinks and in the light of the two candles they must have found somewhere and stuck to  the floor, he sees her sitting with her back to the wall on the far side, her legs drawn up to her chest, her head on her knees and a blanket around her shoulders and over her head… shaking. And he realizes that the sound he heard is the chattering of her teeth. He sighs silently as he sits down on the cot opposite a sleeping Dr. Weir.

“Miss Cadman?”

No answer for a few seconds, then muffled from beneath the blanket, “Don’t call me that.”

Oh come on. He can’t believe this is happening. “What else do you want me to call you then?”

She’s silent again and he suspects it’s more to compose herself and not let him hear her teeth chattering through speaking than actually having to think about her answer. Then, “Camarada Paloma.” Really? Her nom de guerre is “Dove”? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? “Or Laura.”

Alright. Fine. “Okay, Laura,” because he sure as hell ain’t calling anyone a comrade, no offense to the commies or anything, it just isn’t his thing, “why don’t you get up and take the cot? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor and…”

“I’m not tired.” Oh right, uh-huh, sure.

He can’t help but snort. “I seriously doubt that.”

“Don’t you dare condescend me.” What… he thinks he never heard anyone sound so… pissed off in a very low and calm voice. Again he wonders what she must have seen to get so angry so fast over something decidedly trivial.

Then again, he’s pretty sure he sure as hell doesn’t want to know what it was.

He takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I just… Look, you must be freezing to death down there. Why don’t you…”

“Come up to you for a cozy little “snuggle”? You bet your life I won’t.” Jesus H. Christ what did he do to her?

Or…

Or  rather… what did someone do to her? Suddenly, the fact that she’s a woman among so many men at Albacete and other Republican posts and that war is terrible and that it makes terrible person out of a lot of people hits him like a slap in the face. If anyone… He swallows. “Look, Laura, I wasn’t trying to… to insinuate anything, I just don’t want a fellow soldier freeze to death. Just get up there and take my place here, I promise I’ll be off the cot before you touch it.”

She doesn’t say anything and he thinks that this time it is because she’s thinking about his offer. If he were honest, he’d have to admit that he’s dying to know who made her so afraid of men that she’d rather freeze on the floor than get on a cot as soon as a man is present but he knows asking her would be a very bad idea.

“Alright.” For the first time during their exchange she looks up and even in the candlelight he can see her frown as soon as she looks at him. He wonders… “And before you ask: no, I haven’t been attacked by anyone. I just had one too many stupid offers yesterday.”

Slowly, he nods, ridiculously relieved that no one harmed her that way – or any other, really – and starts to get up when he sees her frowning again and then purse her lips several times before she says, “Actually… I think it’s pretty stupid of you to want to freeze down here, too.” Uh-huh. So…? “So… if you don’t mind, you can stay on the cot.”

Yeah, well. For a moment, he wonders how much of this will have made it to Sheppard once he and Weir change stations because he got to know Weir as a very light sleeper. But then again… Sheppard knows not to stick in his nose into affairs that aren’t his own and he doesn’t think Weir’s that much different, so he just nods at Miss Cadman… Laura and she gets up, pads over to him and sits down next to him… surprisingly close, actually.

She doesn’t waste time, immediately adopts the same stance as before on the floor and pulls her blanket around herself as tightly as possible. He can still hear her teeth chattering, anyway. He sighs. “Laura… I don’t think that blanket’s going to do anything good. I’d rather you had mine than you sitting here and… you know.”

His sister once told him that the reason why he always got himself attached to the wrong girls is his chivalry. She said it when he found his first girlfriend sharing her apple with a boy from a year higher up and she said it when he caught his ex-wife kissing one of the Lieutenants in his company and she said it about basically every other girl he’d had in between. She said he needed to become wary of all those girls that accepted it without qualms and with a sweet smile and fluttering their eyelashes.

She never said anything about the girls that would say, “Sounds like a pretty stupid idea to me, Sunshine Boy.”

He can’t help but grin and he hopes to God she didn’t see that because that would probably just result in another black eye or something. “My teeth are not chattering, Laura.” She just shrugs and… that’s it. Alright. He shrugs, too and leans back and closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep.

And after about ten minutes it turns out that she’s not only freezing but also having nightmares because little groans and whimpers are starting to mix with the chattering and shaking and he feels his chest rise in a long drawn silent sigh. Oh good heavens. “Laura?” he whispers but she doesn’t react so he tries it a bit louder. “Laura?” It takes him another three attempts until she wakes up. No jerking or gasping, just opening her eyes and looking too old, too hard, too tired to be anywhere near the ages he estimates her to be.

There’s an urge in him, an idea, something he feels he just has to do even though he knows he shouldn’t be doing it. The thing that convinces him to do it anyway is the fact that Laura puts her forehead on his shoulder, as if she’s too tired of holding up her head.

Gently, he pries the blanket loose from her fingers and scoots close to her. He moves to cover her with half his blanket and pulls part of hers over himself. Then he mimics her earlier move, drawing his legs up on the cot. All throughout his move, she stays silent, almost but not quite frozen, so he attempts the last part of his idea with care, precision and even more gentleness than before as he puts his arm around her shoulder.

It takes her a moment – in which he half expects her to get back to her belligerent violent tactics from their first encounter – but then he suddenly feels her relaxing against his side and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel himself relax, either.

She doesn’t say anything, just puts her head on his shoulder and he draws her a little closer to him and when he feels her breathing grow regular and deep next to him, he realizes the most startling, strangest thing.

He realizes that this moment here in Spain, on a dirt road to probably another bloody battle with a wild little ambulance driver he hadn’t even known until a few hours ago by his side is the first time since setting foot on European soil, maybe since years ago, that he feels like everything’s going to be alright in the end. Even if their first meeting wasn’t exactly auspicious. Even if she gave him a real nice shiner. Even if this is war and they’re heading into a battle that might get even worse than the Jarama.

If he can just manage not to lose her before he even really got to know her, he knows things will be alright in the end. He just knows they will.

*asqueroso – disgusting
*La puta madre – fucking shit
*Basta ya, brujita. – That’s enough, little witch.

Chapter Text

Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More)

“Charlie boy, don’t go to war, first born in forty-four
Kennedy made him believe we could do much more

Oooh
Lillian, don’t hang your head, love should make you feel good
In uniform you raised a man, who volunteered to stand.”

The Lumineers, “Charlie Boy”

If all she ever did was sit here and smoke and drink and flirt, she thinks as she crushes her cigarette stub into the nearest ash tray, just to light the next only ten seconds later, Vietnam in 1966 wouldn’t be so bad, actually. Okay, so you have the heat and the humidity and the mosquitoes and the VC attacks practically every morning on the ride from the billet to the base. But if she’d just stay at Le Van Loc officers club on Tan Son Nhut Air Base permanently, ‘Nam would be a pretty fine place indeed.

Unfortunately, she’s Lieutenant Laura Cadman, Women’s Army Corps, here with MACV and she takes pictures and writes stuff for a living, travelling all over the country. And six months into her twelve months tour, she wonders why the hell she ever thought volunteering for a spot in this hellhole would be a good idea. Not for the first time, either, mind you. Humorless, she snorts, then takes a far too long drag from her fresh cig.

Mom would be horrified; seeing her sitting here, smoking and drinking, surrounded by men without a proper chaperone, in trousers, she thinks and then promptly has to snort derisively again. Mom would probably stop speaking with her, if she saw her here. If she hadn’t done so already three years ago when she joined the WAC on a whim. Well, that had been a one of a kind…

 “How often do I have to tell you that that’s a really filthy habit, huh?” Right. And there comes Ms. Career Air Force Nurse Captain Maureen Reece herself.

 She turns around, leveling a withering look she had twenty-five years to practice on her bigger brothers on the woman in the immaculate Air Force uniform in front of her. “What exactly? The drinking or the smoking?”

 Reece rolls her eyes as she climbs on the bar stool next to hers. “The cynicism.” Then she turns to the bartender and orders her usual.

 Mh. She frowns. “Where’s your escort?”

That makes Reece snort and wave her hand in the direction of a table full of Navy nurses over from Da Nang. “Doing the rounds.” She follows the gesture, sees Reece’s pilot, Major Thomas Moore standing over the table and flirting with a force equal to an atomic bomb explosion. Next to him is a guy in his late thirties, maybe early forties, looking mildly annoyed. Ah, yeah, that would be Chief Warrant Officer Second Class Simon DeLisle. She narrows her eyes a little and has another look at the pair.

 And yeah… she can see the telltale signs. She turns back to Reece. “Hard shift?”

 Reece nods, taking the cigarette from her hand and taking a deep drag herself, then handing it back to her. “Category Five.” Which means that they won’t see Moore and his co-pilot at the bar until they made it to the Red Cross table in the back.

 It’s their usual routine, as she came to learn when she did one of her first in-country pieces for Stars & Stripes on Moore, DeLisle and Reece and their C-7 Caribou MedEvac plane five months back. Reece goes straight to the bar, orders a shot of straight whiskey, no ice, Moore goes to flirt with everything female on two legs in the room and DeLisle takes care that he doesn’t overstep any bounds until the two join them at the bar.

 And usually… usually, they get joined sooner or later by one of Moore’s Academy buddies, a Pararescue chopper pilot going by the name of Evan Lorne and sometimes even his straight-as-raw-spaghetti-laced co-pilot, Lieutenant Joe Simmons. Usually. When Lorne and Simmons aren’t off the map, just one step away from officially being listed as MIA.

 She shakes her head and exhales the smoke she just drew in, kind of wishing she hadn’t refused the weed one of the Army Nurses – Keller, yeah, that’s her name – she sometimes hangs out with had offered her. She could use a good old-fashioned high, the way they’re saying is all the rage at colleges back stateside, right now. At least it would keep her damn hands from shaking. “Still haven’t heard anything from them, have you?”

 Putting out her stub, she shakes her head. The temptation to light another one is nearly insurmountable but it would be her tenth today and even she knows that she needs to give her lungs a break now and then if she wants to keep up her Army career. “No.” She grimaces as she takes a sip of her gin and tonic. “Intelligence threatened to permanently ban me from their ops room if I kept snooping in, shooting me on sight and all.”

 They both laugh but it sounds hollow, even Reece’s. She knows that Reece likes Lorne and even goody-two-shoes Simmons. And if she’s honest, she does, too. A lot, at least in Lorne’s case. She knows it’s stupid, especially because she’s pretty sure that Lorne can’t stand her and because she’s still trying to convince herself that she can’t stand him, either.

 It’s all his fault, anyway. A week in-country, she was supposed to get to Da Nang, take pictures of Navy Nurses volunteering in a Vietnamese orphanage. Her original ride had taken off without her and it had been hitching a ride on a truck convoy through the jungle or with a slightly cranky Pararescue pilot in a chopper. The moment she’d climbed on board the Jolly Green Giant, she’d wished she’d taken the jungle trip.

 Even today she’s pretty sure that the rocky flying Lorne had presented her with had had nothing do to with the VC leveling their AAA on the chopper and everything with making her feel as unwelcome as possible. She’d always prided herself on never getting airsick… until that day. She still shudders at how thoroughly sick she’d been after that flight and she still wonders how to get back at him for that.

 After that, she’d thought she’d never see him again – Tan Son Nhut is big enough to stay out of each other’s way for an entire year, after all – and good riddance but somehow he’d managed to be there when she needed a ride so often that she’d started to wonder what on God’s green earth she’d done to receive such bad karma. And then he’d turned out to be an Academy buddy of Moore’s and it had been practically impossible to stay out of his way, if she wanted to keep seeing the one woman she’d managed to establish an actual connection with in this goddamned country. Reece still refuses to have any other than professional contact with the Army Nurses and oh, don’t get her started on the Red Cross girls in her earshot, seriously.

 And now the idiot has gone and made VC fodder out of him and his crew. Damned, damned idiot. “Laura?” Mh? “Are you still with us?”

 Um, what… “’Course she isn’t. Don’t you see that dreamy, far-away look in her eyes?”

 Oh. Oh just great. Moore’s done with “the rounds” and doesn’t have anything better to do than comment on her zoning out. Which she totally didn’t do, nuh-uh. “Tom.”

 Well, look at that. Two days ago it was still “sir” and “Captain” and suddenly it’s “Tom”? She raises her eyebrows. “Which memo did I miss, guys?”

 Confused looks all around… except on DeLisle’s face, as usual. Guy’s much too perceptive for his own good, she’s sure of that. If there’s anyone who knows what’s going on on the entire base, then it’s Simon “Air America” DeLisle. Scuttlebutt has it both he and Moore flew for the CIA for years and still no one, not even Lorne has outright denied it to her. So she figures it must be true. And if one of them is a spy, it’s gotta be DeLisle.

 “What exactly are you referring to, Lieutenant?” She’s pretty sure Moore knows the answer but for the hell of it she decides to play along.

 Anything to keep her from wondering where Lorne is and why his absence makes her hands shake and wish for dope. “Oh, you know… Tom.”

 She can see a tiny grin on DeLisle’s face and it might be the lighting but is there a blush on Reece’s face? Moore, for his part… “You got a problem with that… Lieutenant?”

 She knows she shouldn’t but she just can’t help it. She giggles. Outright, honest to God giggles. And even if it does sound a little hysterical, it feels good to giggle, let out some of that nervous energy that’s been building up ever since Lorne didn’t come back from his sortie three days ago. It was supposed to be a quick and dirty extraction of a two truck convoy out of Nha Trang Air Base that got caught in enemy fire on their ride back to Da Nang.

 Some personnel paper-pusher guy from administration and for some reason or other, getting the orders to go out there had Lorne in such a tizzy that he didn’t even say good-bye before dashing off to the helipad. Reece and her pilot guys had been off on a MedEvac flight and by the time they’d been back, she’d been at her billet, desperately trying to fall asleep. She…

 “Hey. Hey, Earth to Cadman!” Huh? She blinks, realizing Moore is waving his hand in front of her face.

 She shakes her head, suddenly feeling like it’s all too loud in here, too full of tomorrow we might die so let’s make the hell out of it tonight, and she nearly gasps when she says, “I’m… I’m sorry, I need a bit of air. Be right back, guys, just a minute.” And with that, she clambers off her bar stool, leaving the MedEvac trio behind that’s probably gaping at her as she pushes her way to the exit…

 Holy Mother of God.

 For a moment, just a tiny moment, she thinks it has to be an illusion but then she remembers that she only had half a glass of gin and tonic and no other drugs and when she sees him standing right in front of her, in the middle of the door and brings herself to acknowledge that he’s really there, suddenly she remembers all the rides she hitched on his chopper and the evenings they spent at the Le Van Loc and the one night they spent at Nha Trang when he told her about his divorce and she told him about being an eternal disappointment to her parents and she realized that maybe, after all, Evan Lorne wasn’t such a bad guy at all.

 Actually, that was the night she realized that maybe, after all, Evan Lorne was one of the very, very good guys. The kind of guy she usually tried to avoid because she just couldn’t help fall in love with them.

 She blinks. He looks terrible. Like he came in directly from the helipad, blood and oil stained flight suit and all. Blood. Blood on his flight suit. She blinks again and for some reason the thought of Evan Lorne with blood on his flight suit makes her brush past him in a wild fury, just in the moment that he opens his mouth to say, “Laura…”

 Later, she will never be able to say why exactly she just did that but the thing is, she just couldn’t stand there a minute longer and look at the blood stains – and even in the bad lighting she could be sure that it was blood, she’s been around medical units enough to recognize how it looks on fatigues – and then go on talking to him as if nothing ever happened. To be honest, until now, she never even allowed herself to think of him as wearing anything else than spotless fatigues or dress uniforms or flight suits, no matter how long the flight was and how hot and humid it was.

 Outside, it’s night and the only lighting comes from the helipad and when she has recovered well enough to be more like her usual self than a heaving, half-sobbing mess, she realizes that there’s still a Jolly Green Giant on the pad, looking badly shot up. Bullet holes all over its hull, the rotors curiously drooping to one side, a gaggle of mechanics trying to move it out of the LZ.

 For a moment, she actually wonders who of the pilots was stupid enough to get themselves shot up like that by the VC, until she realizes that this is Orion. Lorne’s bird. Stupid bird with a stupid star constellation name instead of something normal like Lola or Betty or whatever.

 Oh no, Major Evan Lorne had to go and be different and she tries very hard to stay mad at him for whatever reason instead of remembering how he told her that he’d joined the Air Force because he’d wanted to be as close to the stars as he could, because he’d wanted to be a fighter pilot and how it stung when they put him in a helicopter pilot slot. That night at Nha Trang had truly been remarkable.

 She takes a deep breath, takes a few steps towards the helipad, through the Heliport gate, feeling a little lost. After a few more steps, she finds herself sitting down on some crate or other, still watching the mechanics struggle with the damaged Jolly Green Giant. Whatever happened in the last three days, it must have involved a lot of shooting and pain and blood.

 Not that Lorne’s usual sorties don’t involve a lot of shooting and pain and blood, mind you. But something… is different about this one. Okay, for one, usually the bullets don’t find the bird en masse like that and two, she’s pretty sure the rotors never looked askew like that. But that’s not the thing that… shocked her.

 What really got to her was the look on Lorne’s face when he stood in that doorway. It might have been the lighting but now that she thinks back she thinks she saw… weariness in his eyes. Not the usual ‘Nam weariness that you get here sooner or later, that sometimes makes it hard to get up in the morning and stop drinking in the evening but a bone deep, painful exhaustion, like something happened that drained him of all the energy that usually gets him going.

 It’s a little scary how well she knows him after six months of being his passenger now and then. She got to know his entire crew, yes, but Lorne… well. She knows that when he’s particularly pissed off with something she did or said, his flying gets rockier and she knows how he likes his alcohol – straight, no-nonsense and only when he’s not on duty or on call. She knows her smoking disgusts him – there’s been more than one occasion when he took the cigarette right from her hand and put it out, apparently totally not impressed by her fuming and glaring – and she knows that she’s the only reporter, Army or otherwise, he lets hitch a ride on his bird. She knows they actually keep an extra canteen of water on their bird because she’s practically infamous for never filling up on water when she should.

 Damn, she thinks, something’s not right here. Something’s definitely very, very wrong. Something…

 “I’m pretty sure smoking is absolutely forbidden at the heliport.”

 What the… she didn’t even notice that she lit up that tenth cigarette, after all. And she didn’t even realize that Evan Lorne just crept up on her. She almost drops the cigarette but remembers just in time how those things like to turn into hard currency in times of war – her father had a few interesting stories about that, especially about his time in Germany in late 1945 – and tries to level another withering glare at him. “What are you going to do, sir? Call the cops?”

 She shouldn’t have talked to him like that, even when he has no part of her chain of command whatsoever but something about him always brings out the worst in her, like she wants him to detest her. And sometimes she suspects that it’s the same for him. Tonight, however… he just sighs and waves his hand at her. “Scoot over, will you?”

 Surprised, she moves a little to her right and he sits down. Without further ado, he takes the cigarette from her hand – she just hates how little resistance she is able to muster up, every damn time – but instead of throwing it on the ground and putting it out like he usually does, he takes a nice long drag himself. She nearly expects him to keel over coughing, seeing as she could have sworn that a guy like Lorne never even thought about lighting himself one but he just sits there, blowing out the smoke and staring at the mechanics who managed to find a truck to help them tow his bird over to maintenance.

 After a fairly long break of just sitting there and staring he says, “So no dope, after all.”

 Oh just great. Of course he had to go there. She has never even touched the damn stuff and everyone still believes she smokes it like Lucky Strikes. She glares at him, snatching away the cig from his fingers. “Yeah, surprise, sometimes even I know how to behave.”

 He just raises his eyebrow, almost as if he’s surprised at her reaction but even in the harsh lighting out here she can see that weird exhaustion in his eyes again when he tells her, “Pity. I could have used some.”

 Not sure how serious he just was – people would never believe her but even she isn’t above admitting that Lorne has his moments of pretty good humor – she doesn’t answer right away. And in the end, that damn passive-aggressive streak wins again. “You could always ask your CO.”

 It’s not that she does it on purpose, really. It’s just that she can’t help it. She knows that Lorne is loyal to his CO, whatever the man’s faults are – and according to the rumor mill, there are many, many of them – and it’s really a bad idea to insult that guy to Lorne’s face. But it just makes Lorne laugh a little without humor and say, “Don’t believe everything they tell you about Sheppard.”

 It’s amazing, she thinks, how a man who’d berate her for smoking and order the barkeep to stop giving her alcohol after that one assignment that nearly got her killed and that she really just wanted to fucking drink away would be so adamant in defending the guy who’s probably still an officer only because he saved some brass guy’s life back in World War II or maybe Korea or something. She takes a drag from her cigarette and moves just in time to bring it out of his range when he reaches for it again. “What about that thing with the State Department officer?”

 He snorts and crooks his finger to beckon her to give him the cig. When she hands it over unwillingly, he says, “Okay, you could believe that.”

 You know, it would be a lie if she said that his answer doesn’t surprise her. Because whoa, it absolutely does. Of all the things people tell about Sheppard, she’d thought that an ongoing love affair with State Department officer Whatshername – Weird or Wire or… yes, Elizabeth Weir – was about one of the last things to be true.

 Or maybe it’s not an affair because State Department officers just don’t strike her as the kind of people who’d have something as sordid as a love affair, most of all not with the black sheep of the US Air Force. So she finds absolutely nothing to reply and they just sit there, next to each other, sharing the cig and again, she wonders what made Lorne abandon his usual self and hang out with her of all people, probably the antithesis to everything he values in a woman or something.

 And damn her curiosity, professional or otherwise but she really, really wants to know what the hell went down so after a few more moments of silence, she attempts to sneak up on him. “How’s your crew?”

 “Holding it together, I hope,” he says and she wonders why they aren’t here as well. Usually, Lorne’s crew – aside from Simmons, there are two Sergeants, Meyers, the medic and McPherson, the crew chief – are thick as thieves and she’s pretty sure that if Lorne were a bit more off the rulebook, he’d have attempted to smuggle his Sergeants into Le Van Loc at least twice now. She also has never seen him walk right into the club after a sortie before. Usually, he takes his time, doing post-flight, debriefing, making sure his crew’s okay. Something…

 Oh, this is starting to get really ridiculous. She huffs. “Okay, spill it.”

 That gets her a rather uncomprehending look. “Spill what… Lieutenant?”

 Ah, playing dirty, that one she knows. Reminding them of their difference in rank as a diversionary tactic. Yeah, she can work with that. “What happened out there? You were supposed to be back three days ago…”

 “Have you been counting, Cadman?” Dammit, he’s not supposed to be amused by this. “Good God, you have been counting.” Not. Funny. “I can’t believe it. Moore was right. You really were pestering Intelligence…”

 Alright, that’s it. She’s not going to sit around her listening to him ridiculing her. “Good night, sir. I really don’t have to…”

 “Hey!” Oh. Oh no. She’s not going to… “Hey… Laura. I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.”

 It’s funny, actually. It’s not even Evan Lorne of all people saying sorry to her, it’s that he uses her first name. It’s only the second time ever, after that weird moment in the doorway and somehow that actually makes her turn around, albeit with expectantly raised eyebrows and her arms folded in front of her chest. He rubs his neck. “Look, I just… I always thought… well.”

 What? What did he always think? If she thought she hated him for making her puke her guts out after that first flight, she apparently was wrong. Very wrong. Because she really hates him for making her turn around with sounding so unlike himself, so… so lost.

 And maybe that’s why she doesn’t do her thing, doesn’t go on asking him and prodding him about what he meant, just walks back and sits down, careful to keep the least bit distance between them because somehow, she’s starting to feel unable to control herself.

 Again, they’re sitting next to each other for a while, without speaking, just finishing that cig and milking it for what it’s worth, until he says, “Charlie. Charlie Williamson, that was his name.” She frowns, not sure what to say to that when she notices how his tight his hands are clutching each other. “My brother-in-law.” Still not getting it – or maybe refusing to get it – she makes a kind of helpless gesture with her hands and he keeps going on, in a voice that makes her wonder if he realizes that she’s still here. “The personnel guy we were supposed to get out from under enemy fire.”

 Oh.

 Oh.

 “Evan, I…”

 He lets it pass, her slip into calling him by his first name, probably not even noticing it. “Did you know that they’re already calling our Academy class the first class to fight and die in Vietnam?” She shakes her head, for some reason dumbstruck and he gives her another humorless laugh. “Moore, Charlie and I… we were what my sister likes to call the class of 1959’s Golden Trio. We were supposedly the best, the brightest… and Charlie wasn’t even supposed to be here. The damn idiot actually volunteered.”

 She doesn’t like the direction where this is headed, doesn’t like how desperate he sounds, how cynical, how helpless, how so not like himself. “If you don’t want to talk about it…”

 “My sister and he, they’re going to have their second kid, any day now. He got in-country three months ago. He didn’t have to go. They don’t need so many personnel people over here but he said he couldn’t let Moore and me do our part and sit back stateside on his ass and do nothing. Can you believe that?” Actually, she can. Lorne and Moore, they’re both top at what they’re doing in ‘Nam and she can even imagine what it must feel like to be the one left behind, the one to be told “Hey, we don’t need you, you can stay home, it’s all good”.

 She clenches her hands, afraid she’ll reach out to take his if she doesn’t control them. “What happened?”

 He takes a deep breath, almost looking as if he just remembered that he’s in Vietnam and that she’s sitting next to him and that he was supposed to tell her where he was in the last three days. “The chopper was downed. By the time we got there, only three people were still alive and we tried to get them out by hovering and winching them up but the VC shooters got lucky and we had to emergency land in a clearing nearby. They nicked a fuel line and we nearly went down in a blaze of glory.”

 Oh.

 Oh God.

 He’d nearly exploded with his chopper and she’d never gotten to tell him… tell him…

 Tell him a great big heap of bullshit, yes. Something she won’t ever tell him because if she’s honest, she can’t even articulate it to herself, let alone anyone else. “But you didn’t?”

 “But we didn’t,” he agrees and goes back to talking about the landing, in a kind of storyteller voice she only knows from that one night in Nha Trang and thought – hoped – she’d never hear again. “We got to the clearing and Simmons and Meyers got to the convoy to get the survivors to us while McPherson and I went to defend the chopper and try to get reinforcements.”

 “Which, apparently, didn’t work.”

 He snorts. “Nope. Between us and the convoy trucks, we didn’t have even one functional radio left.”

 Well. That actually explains a couple things. “So what did you do?”

 He shrugs, trying to look nonchalant. “Kept trying to defend the perimeter, keep the wounded alive and patch up the bird.”

 Right. “And… that worked?”

 Now he rolls his eyes, gesturing to the chopper that now nearly arrived at the maintenance shed. “Course it did. We could get the radio operational after a couple hours and at first we thought we’d get rescued but apparently, all they could manage was have a bird drop us a box of spare parts and medical supplies.” He snorts again, but this time there’s actual humor to it, to her surprise. “Okay, that and err… that.”

 For a moment, she struggles to recognize the item in his hand – a flat, quadrangular little package – until it clicks and she seriously hopes that he can’t see how her face is heating up. Three years in the Army and six months at war and she still can’t help blushing at a condom. Thank God the face he makes is hilarious enough that she can cover up her rather virginal reaction with giggling and saying, “Sheppard did the drop, didn’t he?”

 Chuckling, he nods and packs away the condom into one of his leg pockets. “He did. Said he thought he wasn’t sure how many patches we’d need for all the busted lines and that he had to improvise. But knowing Sheppard…” He shrugs and grins.

 And then, from one moment to the next, all the levity they just experienced for one wonderful moment is gone and there’s the exhaustion and the despair back and he almost chokes on the words when he says, “Charlie’s dead, Laura. He was alive when we found them but he just… how am I gonna explain that to my sister? How am I gonna explain that to my nephews?”

 She has no idea why he came to her with that, why he didn’t talk about it with his crew, with Moore, with just about anyone else but here he is and he’s quite clearly in pain and even though some liked to call her the Iron Maiden at college because she refused to see it as the quickest way to make a satisfying match and actually wanted to get an education and even though Reece keeps accusing her of being way too cynical for a twenty-five-year-old, she does have feelings and she does have feelings for Evan Lorne and that’s probably why she decides to throw the rulebook out the window and hug him right here on their crate at the edge of the helipad.

 There’s no reacting at first but after a few seconds she feels him clutching at her, burying his face in her neck and she realizes that this is the first time ever she sees Major Evan Lorne lose his cool. Flying through a hail of bullets and being chased by RPGs never even scratched at his calm and despite his tendency to express displeasure at something she did or said by resorting to sick making flying, she always felt the safest in his bird. And suddenly he’s holding her tight, as if he needs someone to support him because it probably just now registered that he failed to bring his brother-in-law home unscathed.

 She doesn’t really know how to react, not having lost anyone as close as Lorne must have been with his brother-in-law. Her brothers managed to get exemption from the draft on various health reasons and moving to Canada, respectively and she carefully avoided making too many friends down here, especially among the grunts. She never had anyone she needed to take care of so they would make it home safely.

 “He wasn’t supposed to be here,” he murmurs into her neck and she moves to hold him tighter, make the anguish go from his voice and his entire bearing.

 She doesn’t say anything or maybe she murmured back some “It’s okay”s and “I’m here”s but she’ll never be sure, just as she’ll never be sure whether she put a kiss or two to his temple or not but she’ll always remember how she buries her hand in his hair, how it feels in its not-quite-grooming-standard-length sweat-and-grime-cakedness, how it smells of gun powder and jungle and pain.

 She’ll always remember how she never hears or feels him sob and yet sees tears streaking through the dirt on his face when he puts his forehead to hers.

 It takes him a few moments to find the breath to say something and then he whispers, in a weird, ragged way, “I’m so glad you’re still here.”

 She nearly laughs, a sad little laugh but then she remembers that she originally was slated for an assignment all across the country two days ago that she ended up practically selling to another reporter, off for some FOB reporting glory. She reaches up to touch his cheek, almost surprised to really find it wet. “My favorite taxi driver wasn’t in town.”

 That makes him laugh, the same sad little laugh she almost gave him and he touches her cheek, still leaning with his forehead against hers. “And here I thought you didn’t even like me.”

 “Same here, you idiot,” she tells him as she moves to embrace him again and he lets her, “same here.” Then she hugs him tight again, telling him in a whisper, “I’m glad you came back,” and she hopes that he gets all the things she doesn’t say, can’t say, not yet.

 She hopes he gets that she’s glad he made it back because he’s one of the very few people making this hellhole bearable for her, that he’s one of the very few people she probably couldn’t make it through her tour without and she realizes that she just made the biggest mistake of all times.

 She got attached in a war zone, not only to him but to him the most. And it’s been going on for a while now. And all she did against it was trying to push him away and trying to drink and smoke and sneer her feelings for him away. And she was so, so stupid.

 Then, just when she’s about to disentangle herself from him, to walk out of this while she still can, save the last shred of detachment she still has left, he lifts his head again and his hands to her face and tells her, “I know, Laura. Goddammit, I know. Just don’t…”

 Even with all her leftover brain cells screaming at her to get the hell out of Dodge, all she can tell him is, “No,” and miraculously, he understands. He understands the promise that neither of them could ever make sure to keep, not while they’re still down here, both going on sorties and assignments into combat zones nearly daily. He understands and he nods and he makes the same promise, anyway.

 They don’t kiss, not in this night, at any case. They don’t head for the BOQ, either or into some dark corner. They just keep sitting there at the edge of the helipad until the sun comes up and he has to go to Sheppard for a debriefing and for arranging compassionate leave and she has to go and find a way to accompany her favorite MedEvac team for the time that he’s away.

 They just sit on their crate and she cradles him when he falls asleep amidst telling her about the class of 1959’s Golden Trio and she doesn’t even care who’s going to see them. Maybe she’s just tired of ‘Nam ruining everything good about her and the people she cares about and maybe she just wants to hold on to the one thing, the one person that makes ‘Nam not such a bad place, after all. And she’s gonna do that, with every ounce of strength she still has left. What other choice does she have left, anyway?

Chapter Text

We’ll Dance Until Morning (‘Til There’s Just You And Me)

“If you believe in magic, come along with me
We'll dance until morning 'til there's just you and me
And maybe, if the music is right
I'll meet you tomorrow, sort of late at night
And we'll go dancing, baby, then you'll see
How the magic's in the music and the music's in me.”

The Lovin’ Spoonful, “Do You Believe In Magic”

It’s almost funny, he thinks, that he still can’t believe he’s been thirty days out of country when the plane touches down at Cam Ranh airfield. He keeps wondering if that is how his father felt when they pulled him from the front in 1944 when Grandpa and Grandma Lorne died in a car accident and there was no one else to sort out all the things with the old farm and then send him back to the carnage a week later.

Okay.

Maybe he didn’t. Because he’s pretty sure that when Dad got back to Europe, he didn’t keep obsessing about a little firecracker WAC Lieutenant waiting for him back in the dirt. He knows he should be thinking about a lot of other things but it’s Laura he keeps thinking about. Maybe… maybe because for a long time now, Laura’s been the only positive thing he found to think about.

He shakes his head. Ever since the night at the Heliport he can’t stop wondering if it’s all just a dope induced fever dream, starting right down with the moment he heard Charlie say, “Evan… if you still want to punch me for coming here… you should do it now.”

Ironic that of all the things Charlie could have said, those were his last words. Needless to say, it wasn’t what he told Anna.

Rubbing a hand over his eyes and trying desperately to forget the terrible sound Charlie’s last breath had made in his brother-in-law’s bloody chest, he nearly misses the stewardess telling them they arrived at their parking position and will be able to exit shortly. All around him, the excitement that had been contained until now starts to stir awake and all those teenagers around him are starting to become giddy. His luck that he had to catch that one flight full of USMC draftees more or less fresh out of high school out of McChord.

He tries to tune out the chatter and bullshitting all around him and the cynical running commentary in his head as he’s unconsciously assessing who’s going to make it and who isn’t. The little geek with the BCGs who’s so awfully quiet, he’s probably gonna make it, provided he doesn’t get the stupid notion he needs to prove something to someone somewhere down the road. The Don Juan who can’t stop hitting on the stewardess, he’s probably gonna keep the nurses busy, but not with his charm. The John Wayne who’s seen Flying Leathernecks one time too many, he’s not gonna make it home. The…

Leave it the fuck alone.

Thank God he’s out of the plane only a short moment later, demonstratively ignoring the stewardess’s blatant attempt to get the one guy over twenty-five on the entire flight to take her to one of the local clubs tonight. He’s already got plans and they most certainly don’t involve any women at all. Instead, they involve finding a hooch that serves some non-lethal alcohol and no customers he might know. They told him already at McChord that there’s no way he’s gonna make it to Tan Son Nhut before tomorrow and both Tom and Sheppard said there’s no way they’d be able to squeeze Cam Ranh Bay into their itinerary to pick him up. Laura… well. Apparently, she’s on some assignment or other somewhere in the Ia Drang area and he’s resolved not to try to imagine any worst case scenarios

Anyway. Be it as it may, if he’s gonna have to spend his first night back in-country with a bottle of Jack as his sole companion, so be it. Could be worse. 

Reaching the baggage claim hut, he tries not to pace. He doesn’t have anywhere to be except the R&R center at some point during the night today so there’s no need to let the grunts all around him think the Air Force can’t take a bit of waiting for their baggage.

He’s about to do it anyway just moments before they finally start putting bags from his flight up and thank God they put his bag in with the last ones, so that he’s one of the first people out the damn hut with the damn grunts and the damn chatter. God, how he’s longing for that little lonely place and the bottle of Ja…

Jesus H. Christ on a fucking tarmac.

For a moment, he thinks he must be imagining it – going neatly with his dope induced fever dream theory – but then some idiot Marine actually stops to check her out only to receive a pretty sure very unladylike snap and he knows that she’s really here.

She’s… a vision, actually. Stupid as that sounds but she’s… she’s so beautiful with her hair down and her little white local style dress fluttering a little in the breeze… and she’s actually running at him at full tilt.

Whoa… whoa that girl can jump. And hug. And wrap her legs around him. And holy Mother of God, can she kiss. He doesn’t even hear the catcalls and whistles erupting all around them, he only sees her, hears her, feels her in that moment.

He tastes her, too and she tastes of smoke and cheap chocolate and Wrigley’s. She tastes so real.

At home… at home everything tasted like sawdust and everything smelled of stale cleaner  and here he is back in the dirt and it tastes like Laura and it smells like Laura and it’s the best thing his senses have ever experienced. He sets her down and cups her face, to tell her “I’m so glad you’re still here,” in a voice like a drill sergeant after screaming at recruits for three days straight.

She smiles and it’s as if the sun rises all over again. “I’m glad you came back.” She gives him another peck on the lips and for a moment, only the two of them exist. No war, no casualties, just a guy and a girl and then the sound of a Phantom II drones all over them, as if the fighter jet is direct above them. She lets go of him, still smiling but he can see in the slight veneer over her eyes that she knows very well where they are and great, now he does, too.

“Welcome back,” she says, a little belatedly and it makes him chuckle, probably the first real laugh since he left for Buckley AFB a month ago and he’s so grateful that he has this one person left, this one person who still manages to make him laugh.

“Thanks for the welcome. Very enthusiastic.” She grins at him. He can’t help grinning back. Then, suddenly, he sobers up. “A lot better than the greeting I received back home.”

She frowns and takes his hand. Apparently, she’s gonna take full advantage of the fact that she’s out of uniform and not often enough at Cam Ranh Bay for being universally known as That Female WAC LT With The Camera And The Big Mouth. “That bad, huh?”

He squeezes her hand and starts walking towards the R&R center. “Worse.” He feels her tighten her grip as well. “People actually weren’t above spitting this time.”

“Huh,” she says, “I always thought they were against the war, not the soldiers.”

Shrugging and trying not to appear to be too fazed about the welcome he’d received at Stapleton in Denver, he replies, “Doesn’t apply to all protestors, I guess.”

She snorts with derision. “Do they still burn their draft cards?”

People had started doing that in 1964 and it had only increased over the last two years, even though it’s officially forbidden since sometime in 1965. It’s his turn to snort now, thinking back to one memorable occasion of visiting the campus of his sister’s alma mater, Berkeley, two weeks ago. “Hell yeah.” Before she can counter with something probably not so nice, he adds, “And good for them.”

At that, she frowns. “Is it now?”

Strange that she would ask that. It’s not like all she’s doing is sitting around Le Van Loc, smoking, drinking and flirting all day. “Sure is. You really want even more nineteen-year-olds flooding into this country and leaving it in tin coffins?”

He sees a shadow wash across her face, this weird weariness he sees in so many of his fellow soldiers, the one she once said that makes it “hard to get up in the morning and stop drinking in the evening” and again he wishes she never even came here. Sure, he’d probably have never met her then, but she’d maybe also never have to look like this. “You’re right, I guess. You’re… Anyway… you got anything planned for tonight?” He wants to tell her what he’d thought when he’d left that plane but she’s faster. “Except making really good friends with a bottle of Jack, I mean.”

“Why aren’t you in Intelligence, huh?” She stops, crossing her arms in front of her chest, giving him one of those withering looks he always found very sexy. Maybe that’s why he kept annoying her. “I mean, you being psychic and all…”

She sticks out her tongue, making him want to kiss her senseless right again. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Now… go unpack and put some civvies on, I’ll be waiting here.”

It stupid and silly but he can’t help it. He grins, saying, “Yes, ma’am,” and damn, does her eye-rolling turn him on. Leave it to him to get horny the moment he gets back to the dirt. Hoping the amount of being turned on is nowhere near visible, he shoulders his bag again, turning to go into the R&R center but throwing, “Try not to break too many bones as long as I’m in there,” over his shoulder. The little indignant huff she lets out actually follows him inside, making him grin again. Weird that he can still do that, multiple times in the space of a few minutes, actually.

They assign him a two-bed-room and for some reason he’s really glad that he sees that he’s alone in there, at least for now. Putting his duffle on the bed, he actually considers disobeying her “order” and walk out in jungle greens but she’d probably give him her right hook or something, so he actually starts rummaging round for some civvies. But damn if Major Evan Lorne heeds his girlfriend’s commands to the tee.

Girlfriend.

Huh.

Where the hell’d just that come from?

Anyway… it’s been a long flight and a shower is definitely in order. And possibly a shave, as well. God, she’s gonna hate having to wait.

And yep, she totally does. When he’s exiting the R&R center after shower, shave and lingering inside for five more minutes just for good measure, she’s pretty much looking ready to explode. Very adorable, that, actually. “Well,” she says after staring at him for a full thirty seconds with a really mean look in her eyes, probably expecting him to blow up in flames or something, “at least you clean up nice.”

He works very hard to keep a straight face, telling her, “Yeah, well, wish I could say the same… Jesus fucking Christ, Crackers!” That damn punch in the damn shoulder fucking hurt.

She raises an eyebrow, looking absolutely not apologetic. “Crackers?” She even gives him air quotes and a questioning face and… yeah, where the hell did that just come from?

Probably from the same place as the “girlfriend” from earlier and he really, really needs something to cover up his slip up. Because well, that’s basically the first thing he thought about her when she climbed in his bird for the very first time. Red-haired, much too brazen for her own good and damn well crackers for coming to a place like ‘Nam in the first place. He clears his throat. “Well, uh… seeing as you’ve spent enough time on aircraft to actually qualify as having “flight hours”, we thought you needed a call sign.”

She doesn’t look convinced. “And that’s what you came up with? Since when are you guys British?”

Well. He shrugs and tries to take it all in stride. If faced with a dangerous animal, never show fear. “Not the guys, just me.”

Still not buying it. Mh. “Since when are you British?”

He can’t help sighing. “It’s… a long story. Just go with it?” One day he’ll tell her about Mrs. Finch-Bosworth, the English teacher who came over with a GI from the UK with the soft spot for kids who were left fatherless after World War II. One day he’ll tell her all about growing up without a father, all about getting married only a year after graduating to a girl he should never have married, for the sake of both of them, all about feeling more at home in ‘Nam than he has felt back stateside in a very long time. One day will be the day.

Just not today.

And, just to prove his point about Laura possibly being if not the only good, then certainly the best thing about ‘Nam, she just rolls her eyes, disentangles her arms in front of her chest and takes his hand again. “Come on, I want to get to the USO club before those Marines drink away all the potable alcohol. If they’re anything like those back at TSN…”

She half drags him, telling him about she had this local club all scouted out and ready, only to be told no one would be going out today because of the warnings they’d received and that she hadn’t wanted to jinx his first night back in-country and how hard it had been to keep Tom and Sheppard to keep quiet about her little plan to surprise him and how Reece had made her wear this damn dress that shows off the legs that usually are obscured by damn jungle green pants and he lets her.

He knows he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be enjoying himself with her, getting to annoy her by taking away her precious cigarette mid-drag – he knows she thinks he hates her smoking but the truth is, taking her cigs away under the pretense of propriety had been one of the only ways he could get close to her, possibly even actually touch her and he just can’t let go of that habit – but he just can’t help it.

She’s here and he’s here and they’re wearing civvies and halfway through their visit to the USO club someone puts a dime in the jukebox and ‘Unchained Melody’ starts floating through the room and he finds himself getting up from the barstool and actually leaning down to put a kiss on her hand, just like his mother had taught him to in one of her pre-war moods and when he holds her in his arms, swaying a little to the lilting tones of the Righteous Brothers, a deep, nameless longing fills him, filling him with a pain even worse than that of feeling one of his best friends slip away in his arms. A longing for things to always be like this, never change, this moment frozen in time. A longing…

“Me, too, Cookie. Me, too,” she says, her voice nearly unintelligible over the din, nearly breaking when she calls him by half his call sign and all he can do is lean down and gently kiss that spot in the crook of her, right above where her dog tags are always showing through, just like now. He knows how it looks, two Americans in civvies with the chains of their dog tags shining through here and there, embracing each other on the dance floor but right now, he doesn’t give a fucking damn about that because there is no other place he’d rather be than right here, right now and he’ll hold on to all of that until his last damn breath. What else is there left for him to do, anyway?

Chapter Text

With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown)

“How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?”

Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”

 “So… why exactly is Lorne’s crew calling you “Crackers” now, Lieutenant?” She grins, trying to look enigmatical but probably failing spectacularly and ending up with maniacal or something.

 “That, sir, is between Major Lorne’s crew and me.” Sheppard snorts.

 “Yeah, well, at least you fit right in… with Squeaky and Fortune Cookie.” That, in turn makes her snort and Sheppard’s gives her another grin, one of those that has half the female population on post in vapors every time they see him do it. She’s been wondering for a while now if it’s just her or if he’s doing it exponentially often around her when Evan is in the vicinity, knowing full well that straight-and-narrow Evan Lorne has a decidedly jealous streak.

 In fact, when Evan heard that she’d be flying with Sheppard today because he’s on call and Sheppard just took over transporting medical supplies to her newest assignment of interviewing GIs at some firebase upcountry…

 “…stay the hell away from my sergeant.” Huh, what… Evan?

 “I ain’t gonna do shit, you little hippie motherfucker.” Whoa. Whoa, who is that kid with the Southern drawl and why does he think he can actually…

 “I think that’s still Major Little Hippie Motherfucker, sir, to you, Baker.” And that was… Meyers? She blinks, tries to take in the scene in front of her. They’re at the back of one of the tool sheds at the heliport and in the shadows that the big lights throw she can see Evan and his medic and some kid she doesn’t know with a decidedly hillbilly drawl and… is that what she thinks it is?

 She turns to Sheppard but he just shakes his head, carefully trying not to draw attention to them and she tries to concentrate on the scene again when she suddenly hears Hillbilly say, “You shut your stinking nigger trap. Just wait until we get to…” and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

 Later she will never be fully able to reconstruct what exactly happened but all of a sudden, Evan has Hillbilly shoved against the wall of the tool shed, his fist grabbing the front of Hillbilly’s shirt and pinning the guy to the wall and he’s scowling and she has never heard a more frightening tone from anyone ever when Evan practically hisses, “I will never, never see, hear or hear about you harassing any of my crew ever again or I will kill you. Do you understand?” Transfixed by the fact that he looks and sounds so different that he’s actually a whole different person, it takes her all until she hears him repeat, “Do you understand, you little piece of racist, bigoted…” to actually react.

 By then, both Sheppard and Meyers seem to have gotten over their momentary paralysis as well and react instantly; Meyers prying Evan away from Hillbilly and Sheppard reacting fast enough to catch Hillbilly before he can plant retaliation on Evan’s face.

 Hillbilly keeps screaming obscenities – interesting how he manages to lose control so easily in front of a “lady” when those Southeners usually like to demonstrate their chivalry at every turn – at Evan and Meyers until Sheppard puts his foot down and tells the guy, “If you don’t stop that right fucking now, I promise you every dust-off chopper in the entire country will be busy when you and your sorry ass racist friends need another extraction. Your choice, Sergeant.”

 When Hillbilly doesn’t stop right away – apparently, he wants to make a point and demonstrate just how stupid a guy can be – Sheppard gives him a good shake himself and then pushes him away, practically spitting out, “Get lost, Baker.”

 To her amazement, Hillbilly actually takes Sheppard’s advice and stumbles away, mumbling something about going to “the LT” with that but the guys have already stopped paying attention to him. There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence in which Evan finally starts to look like himself again, Meyers looks decidedly unhappy and Sheppard shakes his head. “Goddammit, Lorne.”

 The man she’s sleeping with for two and a half months now shakes his head himself and helplessly shrugs. “I just… I…”

 There’s a dejected and very confused look on his face and if anyone ever asks her why she did what she’s about to do, she’ll tell them the truth. She’ll tell them that seeing him like that just gave her heart a very real, very painful squeeze. One of those she’d painstakingly tried to avoid when she’d set her boots on the ground eight months ago. She clears her throat. “Sir… I think I’ll better take care of this.”

 Now they’re all looking at her and probably for the first time in her entire life, she feels terribly self-conscious. “Lieutenant, I don’t think…”

 Self-conscious. Not intimidated. She nearly scowls. “I said I will take care of this, sir.”

 After another moment of indecision, Sheppard finally throws his hands up and stalks away after telling Evan, “I’ll deal with it if he really goes to his CO but this isn’t over, Major. We’ll talk about this. ASAP.”

 Evan just mutely nods and she takes a tentative step towards him. He doesn’t react and she diverts her gaze to Meyers, trying to gauge his stand in all of this. And yeah, it’s what she was afraid of. The expression on his face… she’s not sure if she’s ever seen a more disappointed man than Master Sergeant Will Meyers in this moment. Evan must have seen it, too. “Sergeant…”

 “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d prefer to fight my own battles in the future.” Well. That was probably the worst set down in the history of set downs, and the worst thing about it is that it’s pretty much deserved, too. She swallows, and Meyers looks like he wants to add something but in the end, he just nods at her with a “Ma’am,” and then turns to go, as well.

 It takes Evan all until Meyers is gone to move again, walking over to the wall of the shed he just pushed Hillbilly against and slumping against it, sliding down until he’s sitting on the ground, his elbows on his knees and grinding the heels of his hands in his eyes. Her heart aching, she walks over to him and slides down next to him, angling her legs the same way.

 They sit there, in silence with their shoulders almost touching, he fiddling with his Academy ring, turning it on his finger, making her insane, for at least a few minutes until she says quietly, “He was right, you know.”

 His only reaction, at first, is to tip his head back and lean it against the wall, his eyes closed. Sighing silently, she takes a scrunched and well-worn packet of Lucky Strikes and the accompanying Zippo – a gift from her father upon graduating OCS – out of her breast pockets, fumbles out one of her last cigs and lights it up and yep… there he goes again.

 If she didn’t secretly love how attuned they’re to each other by now, she’d probably actually hit him square in the face every time he simply takes the cig out of her hand without ever waiting for her approval. Today… well. His head is still tipped back and his eyes are still closed when he exhales audibly and then drawls, “Damn, still no dope.”

 Oh good God. She actually moves to punch him in the arm and forcefully snatches the cig out of his fingers, ignoring his protests and practically growling, “Listen, Puff, if you wanna go back to your Land of Lies, how about you ask the damn Army Nurses?”

 “Fuck, Laura, I wasn’t…” God, she’s so done with it, with everything from ‘Nam to men who always try to deflect her and in a fit of rage, she tries to jump up, only to feel his hand clamp down on your shoulder firm enough to make her sit back down.

 She doesn’t look at him, though because honestly, she’s had it with the “Cadman and dope are made for each other” jokes she gets to hear all over ‘Nam and she’s just so fed up with hearing it from him, of all people. She shakes her head and takes a deep drag herself. “Honestly, Lorne… what the fuck is wrong with you?”

 Next to her, she feels him move again and when she sees him reaching for her cig from the corner of her eye, she’s tempted to stab the damn thing into his hand and be done with it but she’s not that far gone, yet. She lets him have it, in the end. He’s silent again, taking one drag, then another and another and just when she thinks he’ll probably just keep sitting there, smoking and being an ass, he says, in a weirdly detached voice, “Have you ever seen a man slowly bleed out and die?”

 Oh.

 Oh God.

 She struggles with something to say but in the end, she doesn’t get to do it, anyway because he just plows on in that odd flat voice. “Charlie didn’t look so bad when we found them. He had a couple bullet wounds, nothing too tragic. Meyers patched him up. Had a bit of trouble with the VC but otherwise, things were fine.”

 “Evan…”

 He shakes his head, not looking at her and practically hanging on to that cig for dear life. “Then, suddenly, couple hours or so later, he starts wheezing, says “Hey, I think something’s wrong…” and Meyers takes another look at him. Lifts his shirt and whoa, he’s got a bruise the size of… Florida or something, all over his chest.”

 And all the time, he sounds as if he’s talking about some random GI, not his goddamn brother-in-law. It’s scaring the living daylights out of her.

 “It took him another hour to die. All the time, he made this sound, when he breathed in and out and in and out…” He makes a terrible wheezing sound to demonstrate and she wants to gag him, hit him until he’s unconscious, anything to make him shut the hell up. “He said… his last words… he said that if I still wanted to him for coming here, I should do it now and then he just… he…” He coughs, the nearly done cig shaking violently between his fingers. “He drowned in his own blood.”

 There’s nothing she can reply to that that won’t sound tacky or trite or useless. So all she does is gently take the cigarette away from his hand and put it out in the dirt next to her. As she does so, she notices that it wasn’t the cough that made the cig shake in his hand and she quietly takes the empty hand in her own, to lace her fingers through his and hold his hand between them. She can feel him holding on for dear life.

 And yet the only thing she does find worth saying is, “He was still right.”

 The laugh he gives her sounds desperate but he keeps holding her hand, actually moving it to his mouth and putting a surprisingly soft kiss on her fingers. “What was I supposed to do, Crackers? Let that little… piece of shit and his shitty little friends keep on harassing my crew member?” The way he says crew member, it sounds more like “one of my family”.

 She refrains from sighing, simply leans in a little closer, so that their knees are touching and that every inch further to her right would have her sit in his lap. “No, of course not. But…”

 “Did you know that there’s KKK on this base?” Well… no, she didn’t, actually. Which worries her. She’s a reporter, she’s supposed to know such things, isn’t she? “I don’t have any substantial proof but Baker’s almost sure as hell part of that. Am I supposed to wait for burning crosses in front of the NCO quarters before I react?”

 She rubs a hand over her eyes, feeling so damn tired again, right out of the blue. It happened less ever since he’s back. If she felt tired in the last month, it was usually because she didn’t spend most of her nights sleeping, or at least not sleeping alone. Unable to keep holding on to him, she pries her hand lose from his and hugs herself briefly. She keeps leaning in, though. “Evan… I know that you meant well but… what do you think is gonna happen to him in the barracks now?”

 It’s not that she has ever actually seen anything she’s insinuating now, at least not with male soldiers, but she’s seen her fair share of nasty things going on in women’s barracks during OCS and her first station in the US. She has seen what a herd of furies did to a black female NCO after her white superior dared standing up for her to them. She doesn’t even know if the NCO is still serving after that. She has no illusions about men being any better at handling what Evan just did.

 He’s leaning forward, dropping his forehead on his knees, his hands folded in his neck and she’s tempted to reach out to him and rub his back soothingly but for some reason she’d rather leave him alone right now. It’s probably the wrong decision, seeing as she left him alone about his brother-in-law’s death, too and look what came out of that but for some reason all she can is watch him struggling through everything that happened, ever since that day at the heliport.

 After a minute or maybe ten spent in that position, he leans back against the wall, with his hands still behind his head. Suddenly, he looks as if he just aged five years. “I really, really messed up, didn’t I?”

 She just nods and leans her head on his shoulder, somehow insanely glad that she feels him putting an arm around her shoulder, squeezing very lightly. Carefully, she puts a kiss on his jaw before putting her head on his shoulder again. “All the way to FUBAR, Cookie.”

 There’s a strange… jerking motion from him, as if he just gave a laugh. Or sobbed. She feels him put his other arm around her as well, draw her closer to him, so that she can bury her face in the crook of his neck and snake her arms around his waist, draw in the scent she’s become so intimately familiar with over the last couple months. Machine oil and aftershave and the smoke from her cigarettes all rolled into one, and she feels the beads of his dog tags’ chain dig into her cheek and the damp cotton of his regulation shirt under her hands, before she sneaks the one on his back under the shirt to feel equally damp, hot skin and a scar from a training accident years ago.

 His arms around her tighten and his mouth wanders from the kiss he put against the top of her head down towards her ear and into the crook of her neck before he whispers in a broken voice, “I’m lost, Laura. Ever since Charlie died, I’m lost and I have no fucking idea how to get home.”

 At least he finally admitted it. At least he finally confirmed her suspicions about what was causing out of character behavior like his outburst against Sergeant Hillbilly an hour or so ago. It doesn’t make anything better and she hopes to God he won’t lose another friend, another member of his family, due to the idiocy of thinking he could shut away his grief and guilt in a locker, never to open it again. But at least he opened that locker. Maybe they’re not completely fucked yet.

 She reaches up one hand to bury it in his hair, like she did on that first night at the heliport. She buries it deep and holds him close and she tells him, “We’re gonna find a way back, Cookie and we’re gonna find it together,” because she has no idea how else to tell him not to lose faith in himself, in her, in the universe.

 “Just don’t let me go off the deep end ever again,” he rasps and she wishes she could promise him she won’t, wishes she had that power to take away all his pain and despair and grief and replace it with nothing but the deep, all-encompassing feeling of belonging she feels when she’s with him, the feeling of a warm blanket around her shoulders and a cup of hot cocoa when the winds are raging across frozen Lake Michigan, the feeling of being home.

 Just barely managing not to sob, she shakes her head. “I can’t promise you that.” She wishes she wouldn’t have had to say that. She wishes this war wouldn’t have taught her how to be so brutally honest. “But if you ever do go off the deep end again, I’ll be there to set you straight.” It’s the least she can do for him, the least she can tell him. Anything further and she’d have to use those three words. She’s not ready for those yet, and maybe she’ll never be but she’ll always be ready to stand by what she just told him.

 He takes a moment, a moment to mess up the last semblance of regulation pinned up hair she still had left after a harrowing supply flight with Sheppard by cradling the back of her neck with his hand, the feeling of his sweaty, calloused palm against the base of her head giving her decidedly out of place goose bumps of arousal. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

 She snorts, even gives a hollow laugh. “Yeah, you better.”

 Amazingly, she feels him echo that laugh, mostly sure it isn’t another dry sob.

 Somehow, that also seems to break the spell and slowly, he disentangles himself from their embrace, leaning his back against the wall but keeping his arm around her shoulders and for some indeterminable reason, the urge to light a cigarette is strong enough that she actually sacrifices another one of her precious last bits, taking a far too long drag nestled against his shoulder.

 For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of choppers landing and taking off, the distant din from Le Van Loc and the occasional dirty joke and guffawing laughter from around the tool shed floating through the night air. At some point, she does crawl into his lap, settles down with her back to his chest, between his legs and he hugs her around her shoulders, occasionally letting go with one hand to take a drag himself. By now, she’s seriously considering to stop smoking altogether just so she won’t keep on corrupting him like that.

 Then again, it’s his choice and if he keeps doing that, maybe she’s just gonna start charging him or something.

 Through all that, neither of them talks and she knows she just should let it go but something tells her that this isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. She sighs soundlessly. “You still gotta talk to your Sergeant, you know.”

 “I know, Laura,” he says and nuzzles her neck, “God knows I do.” He leans his head against hers and the heaviness in his voice when he says, “As soon as I find a way out of this clusterfuck…” makes her reach up and behind her to mess around with hair and draw him further down and kiss him.

 He complies and she’s glad to taste him again, like every time. In the short time they’re actually in this relationship, she has come to associate this taste of coffee and toothpaste and smoke with being in an embrace like the current one, nestled firmly against him in a little cocoon that sometimes not even the sounds of war can penetrate. She can only hope that he feels even a fraction of that whenever they kiss.

 When they break the kiss, she uses the opportunity and cranes her neck enough to be able to look him into the eye and tell him, “As soon as we can find a way out of this clusterfuck. We’re in this together, Cookie. You’re not gonna get rid of me so easily.”

 That makes him laugh, a real, genuine laugh without that terrible sadness and hollowness attached to it that his laugh had ever since his brother-in-law died and he squeezes her shoulders and puts a kiss to her temple, telling her, “And thank God for that.”

 She has to laugh herself at that and leans back against him, actually relaxing for the first time today, maybe even in a long time and she knows that today things just got a lot more complicated and a lot worse than what they already were. But sometimes, sometimes things need to get a lot worse before they can better. Maybe this is one of them. Maybe now that it got really worse, he can start getting better and make it better this time around and possibly even unfuck the mess he made about Meyers and Sergeant Hillbilly.

 He has to because damn, that was just stupid but she’s still here and she’ll stick around for as long as he wants her to and she’ll help him with everything she has to get back whatever he lost when he felt his brother-in-law slip away in his arms. What else is there to do when you love someone, after all?

Chapter Text

So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts)

“It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what’s worse
Is this pain in here
I can’t stay in here.”

Bob Dylan, “Just Like a Woman”

He knows he shouldn’t be here. He knows he should be back at the base, pouring over paperwork and working out a way to keep his XO from getting his ass fried for the little stunt he pulled an hour ago. And yet, the first thing he did after keeping Lorne from beating the crap out of that little shit Baker was commandeering the next best vehicle he could find and take it to a little backstreet apartment complex in the expatriate quarter of Saigon.

 So here he is, yet again. Standing in front of Elizabeth’s door, waiting for her to open it and for the hundredth time wondering if this will be the day she’ll have decided that she won’t put up with him anymore.

 “Good evening, John.”

 Obviously, it isn’t.

 He smiles. “Hi, Liz.” She gives him a deadpan look – Jesus Christ, is it a fucking requirement for women to be able to do that with their face to be allowed to go to ‘Nam? – and crosses her arms in front of her chest, leaning against the doorframe. He holds up the bottle in his hand. “I, uh, brought booze?”

 At that, she rolls her eyes and makes a mock invitational gesture and he follows her inside her dingy apartment. There’s only one bed/living room, a bathroom and a kitchenette and a lazily rotating fan on the ceiling. And, possibly, his favorite place in all of ‘Nam: the tiny balcony that only fits a French looking rickety café table and two wrought iron chairs. It’s looking out into the backyard, a rather gloomy and not exactly clean – and definitely smelly – affair but at least you can actually understand what your opposite is saying and the constant noise from the street in front of the house is a little dulled.

 “So,” he says and casually saunters over to her, waving his bottle of booze at her, “glasses or bottle tonight?”

 “Neither,” she simply says and sticks a mug of coffee in his hand while simultaneously taking the bottle out of the other.

 He makes a face. “Stick in the mud.”

 However, he doesn’t continue to criticize her action, knowing full well that she’ll only give him one of those looks that will make him feel like he didn’t turn in his homework on time and just makes his way over to the balcony, taking his usual place. It’s a damp and dark night and he can hear the sounds of TSN Airfield in the distance. Taking a sip from his mug, he can’t help but grin. Damn, she still makes a helluva cup of coffee.

 He has known Elizabeth since May 1942, when they’d carted them from Daws Hill to London for some diplomatic function or other. He’d been a green Lieutenant, part of VIII Bomber Command and absolutely positive that he was invincible and she’d been an embassy clerk, straining against the barriers the Foreign Office put on women in those years. They’d just shared one dance and they’d never had had any intention of deepening the acquaintance but somehow they’d kept running into each other. By the time the next war had come rolling around, he was almost disappointed to hear that she’d gotten married and had had to leave the Foreign Service.

 And then her husband had gotten himself killed in a helicopter crash on his way to one of the MASH units up in the Korean highlands that had needed a dentist for some reason or other and three months later she’d been back in the Service, working in the embassy in Seoul. He’s never gotten up the nerve to ask if that had been her preferred coping strategy or if she’d just been waiting to get back into the game.

 Twenty-four years. He has known Elizabeth Weir Wallace for twenty-four years now and he still tries to be nonchalant when she puts her mug on the table and sits down opposite him, saying, “Okay, John. What’s the matter with you?”

 He raises his eyebrows. “What, I can’t just visit my favorite Foreign Service officer without a special reason?”

 “John Sheppard,” she says with that wry and vaguely flirty look that has been driving him mad for as long as he has known her, “I have seen you with your pants down more than once, figuratively and literally. You really think you can hide anything from me?”

 Damn, that’s just not fair. Most of all because she’s right, both about having seen him with his pants down – that one time she and her boss visited RAF High Wycombe and they’d entered the medical building in the exact same moment that he’d had to cross that corridor from one examination room to the next with nothing more than a hospital gown had been especially embarrassing – and about him not being able to hide anything from her. The first person to learn about the engagement that Nancy had cancelled just a month before he could get back home from his 1948/49 tour in Berlin had been Elizabeth and it hadn’t been because he’d told her about that.

 He smirks. “I can still try, can’t I?”

 She gives him a completely serious look and takes a sip from her coffee. “What’s going on, Colonel?”

 Right. Shit’s getting serious if she’s using his rank without any sarcasm in her voice and he feels himself yearning for one of those cigarettes Cadman keeps smoking. But he quit when Nancy and he got engaged and he’s gonna stay with that, for whatever stupid reason he doesn’t really like to investigate. So instead of pulling out a cig and lighting it, he puts his boots up on the railing of Elizabeth’s balcony and decides to be honest with her. She won’t stop nagging, anyway.

 People never believe him that she can be terribly bullheaded when she really wants to know something but he still has no idea what she’s actually doing at the embassy and he already figured in the Forties that “embassy clerk” most probably was just a more harmless word for “OSS operative”. Ever since Moore and DeLisle were the only ones who didn’t look much surprised when she once made her way into Le Van Loc, he’s pretty sure that she’s not an unknown quantity at the CIA, either. Of course she won’t stop nagging. “It’s Lorne.”

 You know, one of the good things of having known each other for such a long time is that more often than not, it only takes two words to explain an entire clusterfuck. “Still brooding over his brother-in-law’s death?”

 Yeah, if it were just that. “Worse.” She raises an eyebrow, and it’s amazing that this is all she needs to show him for him to know that she’s genuinely interested in whatever he has to say. “He turned from brooding to aggressive.”

 “Sorry to hear that.” And he knows that she is. After Nancy broke off their engagement in 1949 and fucking got married to his brother only six months later, Elizabeth Weir is the only woman, the only person whom he lets past his defenses. Sometimes he has a sneaking suspicion that it’s the same with her, ever since Wallace got himself killed. “Did he assault anyone?”

 He can’t help but snort. “Hell yeah.” He knows he shouldn’t be cussing around a lady like Elizabeth but damn, it’s not helpful that she always takes it in stride. “Sergeant Baker, one of the assholes that kept bothering his Sergeant and a couple more of my black Airmen.”

 She shrugs and he’s almost positive that he knows what she’ll say next. “I’m sure whatever Baker did, it was worth getting thrashed for.”

 Yep, there it is. Elizabeth was always fervently liberal, always advocating to sort things out without violence but never above at least considering to use force when talking didn’t get anyone anywhere. There’s a reason he always finds her again in a war zone; one beyond her probably being more than just one Foreign Service officer of many. He sighs. “Nah, he didn’t thrash him.” Although he’d probably have found it hard not to applaud Lorne if he had. “Just pushed him into a wall and threatened to kill him when he caught Baker insulting his Sergeant.”

 That gets him a vaguely amused look and raised eyebrows. “And you didn’t give him a medal?”

 Of course not, although he wished he could have. As it is, he now has to find a way to both protect Lorne against any retaliation he might get from Baker’s equally racist piece of shit superior officer and make sure they don’t find a burning cross or worse in front of Meyers’s quarters. Or in Meyers’s quarters. He shakes his head. “No, I left him with his WAC reporter to sort it out.”

 She smirks. Elizabeth Weir Wallace actually smirks, wry amusement written all across her face. “Next best thing, of course.”

 He tries to give her his best impression of an RAF officer, the one he learned in three years in High Wycombe and could always make her laugh with. “Of course, dear.”

 As predicted, it makes her snort with laughter and as always seeing the refined Foreign Service officer she usually plays do something so decidedly unladylike makes him want to do decidedly indecent things to her. And by God, with her. Jesus fucking Christ.

 At least she does him the favor of sobering up pretty fast and ask something as difficult as, “Do you think they’re in love?”

 Helluva question, that one. It’s been going on for what, three months now, maybe even longer. And yeah, Lorne didn’t actually think he could fool anyone with that “Keep away the WAC from me if you know what’s good for you” act while simultaneously making sure he was the only available option whenever the Lieutenant needed a ride, did he now? Cadman… God, Cadman could make no one believe that she didn’t realize that she practically had season tickets to Lorne’s chopper. Why they started sleeping with each other only three months ago was, is and will forever remain one of the universe’s greatest mysteries to him. A little helplessly, he shrugs. “Damned if I know, Liz.”

 Usually, she would let it go at this point but today something must have bitten her because she keeps on insisting, “Yes, but do you think they are?”

 He wonders where that is suddenly coming from because he has no idea why she might be interested in the love lives of two officers that are more mere acquaintances than anything else to her. For a crazy, stupid moment of wishful thinking he even wonders if they’re still talking about Lorne and Cadman here. “I kind of hope they aren’t. Love’s got no place in a combat zone.”

 “No, I imagine it doesn’t.” It doesn’t surprise him that she’d say that. What does surprise him is the tone she said it in. A little distractedly and disappointedly, something you don’t get to hear from Elizabeth Weir Wallace, ever.

 One of her fingers – the ring finger, the one where the ring Wallace put on it used to sit until about ten years ago – of her left hand rhythmically taps on the table, nail on metal, making it sound like a telegraph sending a message in Morse and he makes the conscious decision not to listen too closely.

 Instead, he looks at her, really looks at her for the first time in probably years. He doesn’t even know when he stopped looking at her; maybe when he got engaged to Nancy or when she got married to Wallace or when they were suddenly both free again and the possibilities of that made him choke whenever he tried thinking about them.

 Maybe it was when he decided he didn’t want to see curls that still make all the Marines on TSN think that they just hollered after a twenty-year-old and the hands that always remind him of that first and only dance in May 1942 and the legs that will never cease killing him. At some point, he decided he just didn’t want to, couldn’t see all that anymore or he’d do something exceedingly stupid, something that had the potential to ruin a twenty-four year friendship. Just thinking about that feels way worse than flying SAR under RPG and small arms fire, in a moonless night, with his co-pilot passed out from a bullet wound.

 “Well, then, it’s glasses after all, I guess.” Mh? He blinks. “I’m still not drinking straight from the bottle, Sheppard.” God, she’s beautiful when she’s being all sardonic and superior. He yet again manages to clear his throat and not tell her I love you.

 Instead he calls after her, “Just don’t tell me ever again that I’m “seducing” you to drink, Weir!” Her laughter drifts over from the kitchenette and once again he’s well aware of the fact that he’s probably the only one who can get away with calling her by her maiden name. He just wonders if she’s aware of that as well.

 She comes back to the balcony, setting two glasses and a bottle of booze – definitely not the cheap rotgut he’d waved at her earlier, as it’s actually in a cut glass bottle – down on the table and then sits back down. Almost methodically, she fills their glasses and then raises hers. Following suit, he clinks his glass to hers.

 “To war zones.”

 “To war zones.”

 It’s been the same toast, ever since London 1945, VE-Day, the same ritual, sometimes in company just like in London or in Berlin 1948, sometimes just the two of them, like in Seoul 1953 or Washington D.C. 1962. At some point, they always end up on a balcony or in a restaurant or by a river, clinking glasses and toasting to war zones. If he’s honest, those are the only moments that make going to war still bearable after twenty-four years of wars and crises and “police actions”. He’s not going to ruin that by something as stupid as falling in love in a combat zone.

 Or rather by admitting to himself that he fell in love long ago, in a different time, a different combat zone, with a twenty-year-old overachiever Radcliffe graduate trying to make her way in the men’s world of Foreign Service and just kept on loving her to this very day, because he simply doesn’t know how to stop.

 And that’s why he doesn’t get up and leave, never to come back, as he should. That’s why he just keeps sitting here, with his feet up on the railing, drinking her booze and staying far too long to keep to his required sleeping hours. He’d just spend them with nightmares and time not spend with Elizabeth is time wasted, anyway, so what the hell. No one really needs sleep, after all but damn, does he need to spend time with Elizabeth. And he’s very intent on making the most of it, even in a fucking combat zone. What’s left to do when you just can’t stop loving someone, anyway?

Chapter Text

So he can’t get out of it, after all.

For a while, he’d thought that the boss might just ignore it or at least let it slide but apparently, the boss never planned anything of the kind. There’s no other way he can explain a summon to the boss’s office out of the ordinary. There are no performance evaluations pending, he didn’t do anything stupid and the boss told him that approving his request for re-upping is a mere formality that should be already solved. So there is literally no other reason than the boss wanting to talk about The Incident left.

Took his own sweet time, the boss he did. Nearly four weeks of awkward sneaking around him, barely meeting his eyes for anything more personal than things that are strictly duty related. Anything further than that and he’d excused himself as soon as possible. Of course he’d joked around about the boss having discovered some sort of fascinating rock near the Air Force nurses’ hooch with McPherson which was par for the course – anyone can see that their favorite WAC passenger’s got him wrapped around her little finger, and it’s a damn shame it didn’t happen earlier – but they’d both known instantly that Lorne developed some serious issues with talking around him.

And poor little Joe Simmons smack dab in the middle of it. He almost felt sorry for the LT.

But yeah, Lorne’s issues didn’t come out of the blue and he knows very well what the problem here is. Ever since Lorne made the mistake of attacking Little Asshole Baker, his CO knows very well what he did wrong and that he is at fault. Thank God none of the other Sergeants even thought about telling him to be grateful to the Major for meddling in something he has no right to. And thank God for McPherson who’s always been the more patient between the two of them, the older, the wiser.

He pauses in his walk towards Lorne’s office, thinking back about his first days on Lorne’s chopper, the only black guy in a team of four. It would be a lie to say that he was never conscious about that, that it never bothered him but then again, not a lot of black guys overall in Pararescue and he’d been used to the feeling. They’d never let him feel it, not even McPherson with his Arizona twang, being old enough that he began his service in a segregated military.

McPherson… well. McPherson’s got his back, in the mess hall, at the NCO club, everywhere. McPherson and the other Sergeants in the squadron, and they deal with anyone trying to get the better of them on their own. Had it been McPherson who’d threatened Baker, he’d have gladly offered assistance. Had it been McPherson or any of the other NCOs in the squadron, no matter their skin color, shoving Baker into that wall, he’d happily used the opportunity to provide Baker with a few good arguments on why messing with Pararescue people is a very bad idea.

But an officer barging in on NCO matters… that’s just asking for trouble. And that’s why he is so fucking pissed with Lorne. That guy of all people should have known that you keep your damn officer nose out of any NCO business if you know what’s good for everyone involved. Because now he doesn’t only have to watch his back, he also has to watch out for his CO’s back and let me tell you, that’s a damn hard thing to do.

Of course he doesn’t have to, of course he could just stay out of it but despite everything, Lorne is still a decent officer and one of the good, if temporarily stupid, guys. He doesn’t even owe Lorne anything other than thanks for exceptional flying and keeping it together when he saw his brother-in-law slip away right there in front of his eyes – and for never saying anything about it or God forbid, telling him that there’d been nothing he could have done about it because there was and it’s his job and his alone to learn to cope with stuff like that.

He doesn’t owe Lorne shit. And he has a right to be pissed off about Lorne going and doing something so stupid as going off on a fucking Sergeant. If it had been Baker’s little dipshit LT, at least… but no, Lorne had to lose his shit in the exact wrong moment and it was probably a miracle that Sheppard and Cadman came around that bend in the right moment. Seriously, what had the guy been thinking?

Anyway, the boss said 0900 sharp and if he wants to be there 0900 sharp, he needs to get the fuck going again. His old man taught him that he should never be late, back in the Forties even before the Japs went crazy and he’d have his hide if he came too late to a summon from his commanding officer. That is, if he hadn’t broken his father’s heart with enlisting instead of applying for an officer’s position and becoming a pilot, first. Old Man Meyers had wanted to be a Tuskegee Airman so bad in the Forties and they didn’t even let him serve in the Army Air Force in the end.

Jesus, what the fuck is he even doing thinking about his old man? He’s gotta set his boss’s head straight, not get his own twisted around. Straightening himself, he walks up to the shed where the “offices” – more like broom closets, really – of the 38th are housed and knocks on his boss’s door. It takes Lorne only a few seconds to reply “Enter!” which tells him that his presence was expected with eager anticipation. Shit.

He walks in, gives his boss a textbook report, just the way the boss likes it and swiftly executes the order to sit down. He nearly expects Lorne to jump the gun but of course this isn’t how things are done here. There’s a bit of chit chat first and Lorne tells him that his request for re-upping for another year got approved, that his performance evaluation is likely going to be another stellar report… and then drops the bomb, as per usual.

“So, before we finish…” he says, in that typical businesslike voice that means that the boss is nervous about something, shuffling around his papers a little, “is there anything you require assistance with, Sergeant?”

Really, he thinks. That’s how you’re gonna go about this? Seems Cadman hasn’t rubbed off on him as much as they thought. Of course she hasn’t. He shakes his head.“No, sir.”

Lorne does this little clenching his jaw thing he usually does when he’s particularly dissatisfied with something and he’s practically burning to ask the Major what the hell he even expected to hear after that stellar miss a few weeks ago. “Mh, see, I was anticipating this answer.” Good thing he never got to ask the boss what he was expecting. That would have just earned him a busting and he isn’t really sure if it wouldn’t have been deserved. “Which is why I put you in a one hour time slot.” Shit. Shit shit shit. “So… I’ve got a lot of time right now to wait for you to reconsider that answer.”

He should expected Lorne to be prepared. Lorne practically lives the “Be always prepared for anything” credo of every training ever the Air Force has to offer. He just bets that the only thing Lorne didn’t prepare for was falling in love in a combat zone. At least that would explain why it took him so fucking long to make his move on Cadman. Well, anyway, that’s not the issue here, is it? “Sir…”

“Go ahead, don’t be shy, Sergeant.” Shy? Shy? Seriously, sir?

He clears his throat, trying not to let his displeasure show too much. “I’m not sure you understand, sir.”

Again clenching his law and going as far as dropping a few degrees in his tone, Lorne replies, “I’m sure I don’t. Care to enlighten me, Sergeant?”

So the guy’s serious about this. He just wishes he’d be able to still be pissed about him and not appreciate Lorne actually admitting that he needs someone to lay down the law about this to him. He clenches his fists. “Sir… this is an NCO matter.”

Lorne nods, and the worst thing is that he’s pretty sure that the boss really does understand what he just said. “And you think NCOs should solve this on their own?” Actually… he’s starting to get the bad feeling that Lorne knew what this is about long ago and that he’s only here for confirmation, not for an opportunity to get the upper hand of a superior officer. Sometimes, he can be a real idiot.

That doesn’t mean that his ire was unjustified, though. “Yes, sir.”

“How well is that going for you?” Fuck you, Lorne, he thinks. Fuck you and your genuine, stupid, white boy concern. And here he thought Lorne was different from all of them.

The irritation is harder to keep under wraps, the longer this takes and it’s a miracle that he manages to keep his voice even when he says, “Sergeant McPherson and I have the situation very well in hand, sir.”

The Major raises an eyebrow and actually dares to ask, “Would McPherson say the same if I asked him?”

“Absolutely, sir.” Did he really think he’d actually get anyone to rat out their fellow NCOs, white or black?

Damn, of course he didn’t. He can see if in the way Lorne shakes his head at himself and in the irritated tone when he mutters, “Of course he would, why am I even asking?” more to himself than to anyone else. For a field grade, that’s a surprising insight, he has to give him that. “Alright, Will, you’re making it very clear that you don’t want me to press charges against any enlisted man insulting and attacking my Airmen.”

Well. There are many things you can say about Evan Lorne and not all of them are favorable but you certainly can’t say that he isn’t smart. Even though he’s still pissed off at Lorne’s concern about him not being able to handle the little shits of Baker’s circle of cronies, he nods and tries not to sound too smug when he confirms, “That assumption is correct, sir.”

Nodding again, Lorne adds, “For the record, I think this is a very bad idea but if you think you can handle it, knock yourself out.”

He was prepared to go head to head with his boss, full throttle, no holds barred. He wasn’t prepared for his boss to give in so easily, especially after how this conversation started. It throws him out of the loop so hard for a moment that he can only lamely offer, “Thank you, sir, that…”

“Unless there are officers involved.” Right. Of course Lorne couldn’t just let this lie. Of course he had to find that one weak point of the whole “Let us NCOs handle this on our own” logic. Damn Academy grads. “As soon as this gets past NCO ranks, you report immediately to me and let me handle it, no exceptions.”

Damn field grades making actual sense. Damn them all to hell, that’s what he always says. Except that it isn’t, especially not about this field grade, so he keeps himself from sighing and admits, “Fair enough, sir.”

“Good.” Lorne nods again and it’s almost perverse how much satisfaction he draws from being able to see very clearly that the tension still hasn’t left the boss. Guy didn’t really think they’d just kiss and make up and everything would be sunshine and roses again, right? “And Will… if there is anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask. That’s my job as your CO and I hope I just made it clear that I’m serious about it.”

Well, he certainly did make it clear that he expects him to keep him in the loop instead of simply sweeping everything under the rug of “What happens among the NCOs stays among the NCOs”. It’s not fair that he couldn’t simply make it an order and he seriously hopes that Lorne is aware of that. And of how that would piss him off even more if it weren’t such a damn nice thing to do. He nods. “Crystal, sir.” And then, something in the air probably makes him add a stupid but true from his heart, “And, sir… I appreciate it. Just because I don’t always take the offer, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about it.”

Something in Lorne’s eyes tells him that he knows exactly that this Master Sergeant certainly wasn’t under any obligation of telling him that and it’s good to see that Lorne feels just as embarrassed by that admission as he does, even though people not daily putting their life in the hands of this pilot probably wouldn’t have been able to spot it. It really doesn’t do to undermine the military class system as easily as working together on a MedEvac chopper does. Should have joined the fucking Marines, after all, that’s what he should have done.

It’s ridiculous how grateful he is, then, that Lorne doesn’t dwell on the subject any longer and swiftly fires the flare of, “Now that we got that cleared up… what did your wife say about you re-upping, by the way?”

After that minefield of racism on base and the fine distinctions between NCOs and officers, he’s almost glad that Lorne chose that topic for distraction and even feels safe enough to smirk a little when saying, “That she’s thinking about enlisting herself because she’d rather be in the dirt with me than stateside without me.”

He’s been aware that he’s the only one happily married on their chopper for as soon as they started working together, with Simmons being too young and too prim and proper for having committed himself to any relationship at all, Lorne being probably the only divorcee in the entire Air Force who ever managed to rise to field rank at thirty and Mac… well, just don’t ask him about his married life, if you know what’s good for you. Lorne, of course, is aware of that, too so he doesn’t mind his boss’s smirk too much when he say, “What did you tell her?”

You know… he wishes he could say that he told her to leave that fucking be and fucking stay stateside, what the fuck but he’s been married for almost ten years now and even though Jessi isn’t nearly as outspoken as Cadman or as openly sarcastic as Captain Reece on a really bad day, she’s got an unbelievably smart head on her shoulders and the heart of a lioness in her chest. You just don’t tell that woman to sit and home, twiddling her thumbs and wondering when they would see each other again, if she set that heart on going to the mountain before it comes to her. He rubs his neck. “That she should do it soon if she wants to be here in time for my second tour to start.”

It almost makes Lorne grin when he says, “Brave answer, Sergeant.”

Suddenly feeling safe – and a little less pissed off – enough to revert to that scandalously familiar way of talking to each other Lorne and his NCOs developed after over six months of flying together, he finds himself asking, “What did Lieutenant Cadman say about you re-upping, sir?”

Definitely not a good question, he can see that much in the way Lorne clenches his jaw again and taps his desk with his pen. “That she already handed in her request for another tour.”

Okay. He hadn’t know that which is kind of surprising, seeing as he damn well knows better than anyone – okay, maybe except Sheppard and Lorne’s Academy buddy, that Moore guy – what the hell’s going on in this camp. He raises his eyebrows, now genuinely curious. “What did you tell her about that?”

“Something very stupid.” Right. Of course Lorne would tell his girlfriend what he thought about another year in the dirt for her – nothing good, seeing how fucking protective his boss likes to be in the exactly wrong moment – probably even yelled it at her and damn, even though he’s known Laura Cadman only for a little about six months, he never pegged her as someone to be easily cowed, especially not from the guy she spent six months bickering with.

He knows he shouldn’t but after everything, there’s no way he can’t do it. Not even bothering to hide the mocking undertone from his voice, he sweetly asks, “And how did that go for you, sir?”

To his credit, Lorne doesn’t jump at his throat for insolence, just glowers at him uselessly shuffling around a few papers again. “Let’s not talk about that now. Or ever.”

Well then. It doesn’t, in any way, make up for the idiocy of making him the target of even more racist assholery with one misplaced deed of white chivalry but it does give him a bit of satisfaction to see Lorne browbeaten by his new girlfriend for just another misplaced deed of this time male chivalry and being able to – more or less – admit that it really didn’t go well for him, either. It does tell him that Lorne is a bit less of an idiot as he’d pegged him when this all started and it’s good to know that he wasn’t completely wrong with his initial assessment of Lorne being an agreeable, if slightly stern but definitely smart guy.

Maybe, he thinks, as he takes his leave of his CO and gets invited to one of their pre-idiocy team drinking tours in Saigon, things aren’t as bad as he thought, after all. Maybe he can still hope that he can find it in himself to not forget but at least forgive Lorne for that one stupid act. What other option does he have left, with over a year left in the team of that guy, anyway?

Chapter Text

Forget The Dead You’ve Left (They Will Not Follow You)

“Leave your stepping stones behind there, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore

Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.”

Joan Baez, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”

Oh-dark-hundred and what is she doing instead of sleeping?

Exactly.

Standing in the doorway of Le Van Loc and trying to convince herself that what she’s seeing isn’t what it’s looking like. Because that has rapidly become her favorite pastime in the last couple weeks, hasn’t it?

Goddammit, Moore .

“Are you sure you don’t need help, Captain?” Damn, did she just say that out loud? Or did Major Lorne just read her thoughts? He’s scary like that sometimes, Laura told her a few weeks ago.

Well. No use in standing around here like a pair of turnips. She is, after all, a trained nurse, an officer in the US Air Force and damn well the only one who can handle a shit-faced Major Thomas Moore, possibly with the exception of Simon DeLisle. But then again Dee has probably been doing this for years now and she’s glad that Lorne went to her instead of Dee to take care of this. At least one of the guys in their Bou’s cockpit should really be well-rested and sober.

She huffs. “Yes, sir. I’m pretty sure I can handle it myself.”

He just nods and she wants to tell him to get back to his room and Laura and do whatever makes the two of them happy because he really looks like he could use it. It’s been three months since his brother-in-law died and he still looks like shit most of the time. Except, you know, when Laura is around. Sometimes she thinks her best friend in-country – and maybe at all – is actually some kind of witch. Sometimes she wishes she’d possess whatever makes people look ten years younger in her company, too.

Her company… well. She shrugs. “Anyway… good night, sir.” Go forth and be happy as long as you can, she wants to tell him but she’s sure she doesn’t have to. They’re both in the MedEvac trade, after all.

“Night, Captain. Just… you know.” She nods, trying not to look too irritated. This really isn’t the first time that this happened in the last couple weeks, ever since Williamson died, and she’s starting to get really fed up with it.

With that, Lorne gives her one last nod before walking off into the direction of the BOQ, hopefully not to return before tomorrow evening, at the earliest. It’s enough that her night just went FUBAR. No point in ruining another person’s, as well.

Squaring her shoulders, glad that she decided to take the time and get into jungle greens after Lorne nearly scared her to death with knocking on her window instead of grabbing civvies, she walks over to the bar. The club is empty, safe for her pilot with his head on the counter, the barkeep polishing glasses and a blonde… floozy next to her fucking pilot.

Dammit, Tom. Dammit.

Okay, well, trained nurse, officer, practically certified in dragging her pilot’s ass out of this bar. She can do this.

Walking closer, she realizes that the floozy is one of the other Air Force nurses stationed here and for a moment she feels really pissed that he’d really go there but then she reminds herself that it’s none of her business who he fucks and that Lieutenant Casarella is a nice girl, when she’s sober and not done up enough to make a peacock jealous.

Right now, though, she tries to ignore Casarella’s possessive stare – what’s she doing here, anyway, having to be on shift in three hours and everything? – and plants herself right next to Moore. She’s determined to be bossy, determined not to let him fool her or fall back to the insecurity of her first two or three months in country, just this once.

And then her voice sounds gentle and soft when she says, “Tom? I really think it’s time for your beauty sleep now.” Dammit. Sarcastic would have been okay. Pissed off would have been okay. Bossy would have been wonderful. But no, it had to be gentle.

And it should have been Major Moore. It should have been sir. It should not have been Tom. Why she let him make her call him by his first name three months ago is still beyond her.

Of course he doesn’t even stir. Casarella, on the other hand… “Aw, don’ be such a stick in’e mud, ‘rina.” Maureen. Her goddamn name is Maureen. Not Marina. She wonders how often she’ll have to tell everyone that before they actually manage to remember it.

“He’s gotta be in the air in less than twenty-four hours.” And only God knows how much to drink he had this time and how the hell she’s going to get him sober enough to at least be able to fly in a straight line. At least before he’d only done this when he’d been on forty-eight hours of downtime for whatever reason. “And you are going to have to be sober in three hours, if I’m not mistaken.” And, just for good measure, “Lieutenant.”

Casarella pouts. “Don’ be mad, Cap’n. Gonna be totally sober in an hour. Keller’s Magical Hangover Cure ‘n all.”

Oh good God, not that again. When she’d met Jennifer Keller for the first time six months ago, the Army nurse had been a regular small town girl from Wisconsin, in awe of the carnage that was happening in ‘Nam, at the sheer masses of casualties they were pushing into her triage ward on really bad days. And now, six months later… well. Suffice to say, Jennifer Keller ain’t no small town girl no more.

“Just get out, Casarella.” She knows she doesn’t have any real weight to throw around and pull rank on Casarella, seeing as the Lieutenant serves on one of the jet MedEvac planes that fly casualties out of country and so is absolutely out of her range of authority.

Then again, she is the senior rank and even a drunk Casarella doesn’t necessarily equal a dumb Casarella so the Lieutenant manages to take the hint and vacates the place by Moore’s other side to sway past her, another pout clearly visible on her face but at least she doesn’t get into talking again.

So… one down, one to go. She resists the temptation to heave a melodramatic sigh and looks at the barkeep. He’s a local and she’s a regular, and all she needs to do is point to Moore and make an inquisitive face for him to hold up eight fingers and she hopes to God that means eight bottles of beer, not eight Tequila shots – Moore is disgustingly fond of Tequila, says it always reminds him of his childhood best friend who one day left town to join the Army, just like her mother, only to be never seen again – or whatever was his choice of hard alcohol today. He’s the only one in their little round of regulars who’s absolutely not picky about his choice of drink.

Well. No use in crying over spilt milk. She has slightly under twenty-four hours for him to get completely sober again so he can go on nightshift with her and Dee and every second counts. And all of that without his commanding officer getting wind of it. Landry’s really not the most forgiving guy in the case of inebriation among his pilots. She does heave that melodramatic sigh, after all. “Tom?” Aw, not that again. Major Moore. He’s Major Moore now and forever, because if she ever allows herself to become comfortable with Tom…

“Mh?” Oh thank Heavens, at least he’s not in a coma, yet. “Oh… Oh, hey, Kid.” Oh. Oh no. He’s not going to get drunk off his ass and then be all “Oh hey, Kid.” and smiling at her in the most adorable – if that is even a word to be used in connection with him of all people – way. He. Is. Just. Not.

“I think you had enough… sir.” That turns the smile into something like a frown, only he seems really not sure how to do that anymore. Just great.

“I don’… hey, didn’ I tell you to s-stop with the sir?” The confusion plastered all over his face and hair that looks messy enough to rival the near hippie hair of Lorne’s CO aren’t a good combination.

Actually, they’re a terrible combination. “I’m not gonna argue about that with you now.”

Confusion is replaced by a snort and a slightly lewd raising of his eyebrow. Good God. “Why not? ‘S as good a time as any.”

Whoa, for a guy as shit-faced as he is right now, Moore is actually amazingly eloquent, even if his speech is generally noticeably slurred. That won’t change the fact that she sure as hell isn’t going to debate the why and wherefores of not wanting to call him by his first name, occasional slip-ups when he’s being exceptionally idiotic notwithstanding. “It’s not open for discussion, Major.”

“Whoa,” he says and tries to get up from his slouching position to hold his hands up, palm towards her, “anyone ever told you can be real bossy if you try?”

Well, at least she finally met that objective. “Seriously, sir, we really need to stop…”

“Okay,” he slurs, holding up his index finger and looking like he’s trying to be absolutely serious, “’m gonna make you a deal.” Oh. Oooh, a deal. Sure, uh-huh. Not convinced at all, she crosses her arms in front of her chest. She tries very hard to ignore that his gaze lingered a substantial bit too long on the space right above her arms before visibly wrenching his gaze back up to her eyes. “You gonna stop s-sirring me ‘n I gonna go with you. Rrright away.” He even makes a take-off gesture with his hand to illustrate his point.

As Laura would say, holy Mother of God. The… bastard. He actually managed to bully her into calling him by his first name while being seriously trashed. Because she just knows that in that mood, nothing short of complying with his stupid wish is going to make him comply to her wish. She gives him one of those withering looks Laura is so partial to. “Okay, Tom, get your ass up. We’re leaving this joint.”

His entire face lights up in the possibly most innocent smile she has ever seen on Thomas Moore’s face – actually, it’s the only innocent smile she ever saw on his face. It’s doing decidedly unhealthy things to her heart and she hates it. “Oh. Hey,” he chuckles at some private joke he’ll hopefully reveal to her, preferably in the next thirty seconds. “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” Or maybe not. “Get it, Kid? Get it?”

To be honest, it was a pretty passable imitation of Humph… Fuck it. This is getting her nowhere. “Tom… I’m being serious. Can we please…”

“Okay, okay, okay,” he drawls, getting off his barstool with a bit of a hassle – not his usual agile self, is he? – “if you’re sayin’ please, that’s a whole diff’rent ballgame, you know.”

Not dignifying this with an answer, she simply stands by to slip his arm over her shoulder when he’s stumbling at his first step away from the counter. Why the hell is he so heavy? Can’t be all just muscles now, can it?

Anyway, there’s no use in complaining as she nods at the barkeep, implying that she’ll settle Moore’s tab tomorrow morning while he’s hopefully snoring off all that alcohol. She gets a confirming nod – again, not the first time she’s doing it, and she has yet to tell Tom… Moore about secretly paying his debts, instead of always telling him he already did that and just can’t remember it – and starts to drag her pilot’s ass out of the bar.

Okay, so he’s doing his best to help but the night is hot and damp and even though she tries to work out regularly even here, she’s just no match for several pounds of muscular, tall, handsome male.

Wait.

Where did that just… “Kid?”

She tries not to grunt when he halts and immediately sacks against her. “What is it?”

“Can we just… sit down? Jus’ for a minute. Jus’ till the world stops spinnin’.” He sounds so, well, miserable that she doesn’t even protest, only helps him walk over to a crate someone put against the wall of a side building of the club. Almost gently, she lets him down and when he’s seated, she just can’t resist sitting down next to him.

He leans back, his head against the wall and his eyes closed and she wonders how to make him stay awake. Whatever “eight” he consumed, falling asleep can’t be good for him right now. Mh. There is one thing she maybe could keep him awake with. Also, allegedly drunks and children tell the truth, so maybe he’ll even spill tonight. She clears her throat. “Tom?”

There’s no answer at first and she’s prepared to shake him to get him to wake up but then he makes a sound, something like “Mh?” and she takes that as a hint that he hasn’t fallen asleep yet. She’s that desperate.

“What the hell’s going on with you?” She really, really wants to know that.

To her irritation, he takes his time with answering and when he does it’s a stupid, “What d’ya mean, “goin’ on” with me?”

You know that perfectly well, even three sheets to the wind, she wants to say but then again… even Thomas Moore deserves the benefit of a doubt. “I mean that even you have never managed to get drunk twenty-four hours before you need to be back in the cockpit until now. And even you have never needed to be dragged out of that bar more than twice a month before. What’s the matter with you?

“Y’know,” he slurs, “that’s prob’ly the longest speech I ever heard from you.”

It’s not and he knows that. She can’t believe he’d be trying to bullshit her even in his current state. She’s starting to get desperate and pissed off. “Tom.”

“Maureen.” Oh great, now he’s using her actual name and somehow she never thought she’d prefer the incessant “Kid” he placed on her after their first flight to her first name but damn, she does. There’s something inherently dangerous in the way he says it, even though it was an absolutely drunk innocent tone this time. Dammit.

She tries to keep up the only slightly irritated tone in favor of the seriously pissed off tone she’d rather use right now. “Don’t do this, Tom. Don’t…”

“I got a letter.” Huh? What does that have to do with anything… “Where’s the damn thing? ‘M pretty sure I had…” Now he’s fumbling around the pockets of his jungle greens until he seems to have struck up something as he’s pulling a crumbled piece of paper out of one of his leg pockets with a triumphant “Aha!”

He presents it to her with a rather proud grin, like a fourth grader who just finished his math homework with correct results for the first time presenting them to his favorite teacher. Okay, she thinks and takes it from him, trying not to look too weirded out. And then she sees the sender’s address.

Anna Williamson.

She has to swallow at the realization that suddenly dawns on her. That must be Lorne’s sister, as he might have mentioned her once or twice. Charlie Williamson’s wife. And she sent Moore a letter, apparently not too long ago. “Tom… how long have you been carrying this around with you?”

He frowns, scrunching his nose, as if he has to think about this really hard. “Endearing” is a word she’d never have thought to associate with Thomas “Jackknife” Moore but here it is. He’s looking endearing with his drunk thinking face and she hates how it makes her feel. All… “Three days. I think. Yeah. Gotta be three days.”

He never even told them. And, seeing as they have been either on shift or on call in the last three days, he must have been waiting to get shit-faced if the first thing he did after shower and change when they got off duty this evening was to plop himself in front of the club’s counter and not leave until being dragged out by her. Which is a scary thought. There have always been days when he didn’t exactly go easy on the alcohol but she can’t remember him ever having been anxious to drown in it. What in God’s name is in that letter? “Tom…”

“Read it. I don’ mind. I trust you. I don’t trust anyone but you ‘n Dee.” It’s not fair. It’s not fair that he’d say that now, when she can’t even be ticked off at him because he’s just too fucking drunk for that. It’s just not fair that he can break her heart so easily.

Aside from that, “So you don’t trust Major Lorne?”

“Okay,” he drawls after another moment of deep thinking, “you ‘n Dee ‘n Lorne. You’re trusty.” He frowns again. “Is trusty a real word?”

A little absentmindedly, she confirms that trusty is a real word indeed as she skims through the letter Lorne’s sister sent Moore. It’s a really nice letter, full of thanks to Moore for being a friend to her husband since their Academy days, for keeping Lorne and Williamson in check after Charlie proposed to her and Lorne absolutely did not agree with it – she nearly laughs out loud at that, not believing a word of this – for accepting the request to become godfather to their second kid… it’s terrifying how well exactly she can see why this made Moore seek refuge at the bar.

She lets the letter sink to look at him. “Look, I didn’t know. I’m… sorry for…”

He waves her apology aside with a drunken snort. “’S okay. You didn’ have to put up with me an’ you still… oh. Not… good.”

She wants to ask what the fuck he’s on about now but well, the gagging and surprisingly fast and agile jumping up are sure signs… yep, there he goes. Hands braced against the wall of the side building, he’s sick as a fucking dog. Very briefly, she considers letting him sort it out on his own – he could get drunk on his own fairly well, after all – but then the nurse in her wins and damn, she just can’t watch him suffer.

Resisting another longsuffering sigh, she gets up and walks over to him, just when his drunkenness gives him a break long enough for him to mutter “Aw, shit,” with great feeling before dry heaving again.

For a moment she’s tempted to reply with a deadpan “No, actually that’s puke.” but yeah… despite everything he claims, Thomas Moore just doesn’t understand nurse humor.

So instead she goes for gently rubbing his back – absolutely professionally, of course – and making sure he doesn’t choke or otherwise incapacitate himself while purging all that damn alcohol from his system. She better never tell him that this is actually what she’d been secretly praying for. This way, they might have a chance to get past Landry’s uncannily keen nose.

When he’s done, he gives her a heartfelt and kind of heartbreaking sigh of relief before staggering back to the crate and practically collapsing into a heap of… well, not misery but he’s certainly not a little ray of rosy-cheeked healthy sunshine, either. Trying not to grin, she walks over and hides her sudden amusement behind the façade of her profession, putting a hand on his shoulder and carefully turning his face to her to look him over.

It’s a not a pretty sight.

Ignoring the sheepish look in his face as he tries to look away, she keeps a hold on his chin with one hand and gropes around her leg pockets for something to wipe off his face. Finding a couple of sterile dressing pads, she makes do and gets everything that doesn’t belong on his face off, a little amazed at how he just lets her do that, completely silent, with his eyes closed and his head leaned against the wall.

“Okay,” she says when she’s done, extending her hand to him, “up on your feet, Major.”

It takes him a moment to realize that she’d been actually serious. Then he takes her hand and she’s surprised that even after that unsavory episode they just had his grip is still as strong as the first time he shook her hand to welcome her aboard his plane after she’d proven her worth in an evacuation under fire. She hates that she still remembers all those moments as clear as if they just happened yesterday.

He’s upright now and it’s kind of amazing that he isn’t even swaying anymore, just looking a little under the weather. Up until now she only ever managed to get him to bed safely with Dee looking over him at the BOQ but she never actually saw him sober up and sober up so damn fast. She clears her throat. “So, uh…”

“Please don’t tell me you really carry that stuff around with you on a regular basis.” Huh, what? Oh, oh the pads of dressing she’s still holding in her hand. Which is really gross, come to think of. Okay, she’s pretty sure that she had a… there it is. Pulling out a pair of surgical gloves she had in one of her front pockets, she wraps them around the used pads and uses the last fresh pad she had to meticulously clean her hands. That earns her a raised eyebrow and an added, “Seriously? Surgical gloves, too? In your spare time?”

Good God, it’s not like he hasn’t seen her in action before, is it? And how come that she usually needs an entire night to sound at least remotely normal again and he can just puke and sound all sober again? Life’s just not fair. She huffs. “I’m a nurse, dummy. Of course I carry sterile pads and surgical gloves around everywhere with me.”

A smile – an actual fully sober smile, as opposed to his usual grins and drunken slurred smiles – slowly spreads across his face, making him look five years younger and she nearly dies of a heart attack realizing what just happened. She even nearly misses him saying, “You, Captain Maureen Reece, are a woman full of surprises.”

There’s this weird moment when they’re looking at each other, only a few inches distance between them and he leans down and she moves to stand on the tips of her toes… until she remembers she’d just been wiping drops of bile away from the corner of his mouth. She clears her throat again.

“Uh… rain check… Tom?” He opens his mouth, probably to say something along the lines that she shouldn’t make promises she doesn’t intend to keep but she’s faster than him. “You might even get to cash it in if you manage not to get drunk whenever you’re less than forty-eight hours off-duty.”

He starts with “I don’t really…” but shuts up astonishingly fast at her giving him another withering look that would make Laura proud. It’s a small miracle that it really does work.

But damn, there’s no reason for him to look so stupidly dejected. And there’s not a bit of reason for her to sigh and tell him, “Okay, let’s go and find a pitcher of pure caffeine and a gallon of water that won’t kill you for you. I’m not gonna climb into a plane you’re flying with that kind of booze breath.”

It makes him laugh and she hates how that makes her feel all warm and fuzzy inside and she hates how it makes her think I love you like it always does when she manages to make him laugh and she hates how she’d do all of this again in a heartbeat if it just got him to laugh so freely and without a hint of cynicism again.

And then he goes and puts an arm around her shoulders, giving them a short squeeze and she tries to be indignant but it’s just so damn hard when she’s carrying the reason that made him drown himself in booze in her pocket because he trusts her. In the end, she lets him do it again and she lets him call her Kid without even once protesting and she lets him make her laugh and maybe she can keep up pretending that making him laugh doesn’t make her think I love you for two more months, until their tour’s over. Maybe she can go back to the US without ever letting him cash in on that rain check, after all. Maybe she can go back home with her heart unbroken.

Maybe, just maybe she can go on and make herself believe that it’s all for the better if she never allows herself to stray off the lonely career path she once carved for herself, that it’ll all be worth it in the end. It is worth a try, after all. Isn’t it?

Chapter Text

Lonely Days Are Gone (I’m Agoin’ Home)

“Give me a ticket for an aeroplane,
Ain't got time to take the fastest train.
Lonely days are gone. I'm agoin' home,
My baby just wrote me a letter.”

The Box Tops, “The Letter”

It’s been a kind of a bad day, to be honest.

Okay.

Well.

Actually, it’s been a terrible day. It had started off badly this morning and it only got worse from there. Seriously, from having to do pre-flight five times because there was always something not adding up between his check list and his CO’s it just went downhill, until they got to flying SAR into a heavy fire zone and MedEvac-ing a pinned down convoy of Marines and his boss’s girlfriend who’d hitched a ride with them back from her latest assignment.

So yeah, everyone thinks that he can’t stand her but they’re wrong. It’s true that he absolutely, wholly disapproves of two officers who are not even married to each other being indecent with each other, in a war zone but it’s not like he doesn’t like Cadman. In fact he thinks that she’s doing tremendous work, even if she likes to downplay it with calling it “just staged feel good stories about goofy Marines and nurses in orphanages, because the guys get all the good assignments” and she’s also quite a nice person when she isn’t trying to be a cynic once again.

No matter how much he thinks what Cadman and Lorne are doing is wrong, neither of them deserves to be hurt. And if he’s honest, it amazed him thoroughly how Lorne didn’t even seem to acknowledge that one of the injured soldiers that Meyers was treating in the back was his girlfriend. He’s not sure what he would have done, had he been in Lorne’s stead.

Anyway… it’s over now and all he needs to do is go back to his quarters, shower and curl up in his bed, hoping the war won’t follow him into the night. That has proven fruitless in the last five days but he’s not one to give up easily. So he drags himself back to the BOQ, up the steps to the second floor and… oh. Oh.

Thank God there’s no one here or he’d never hear the end of it. The grin on his face must look mighty stupid but he just can’t help it. Whenever there’s a letter with the sender Kassandra Wilson waiting for him, he automatically makes the face that Meyers at some point dubbed “the overenthusiastic puppy” and that probably would have made his call sign in some way if Sheppard hadn’t thought up the infernal “Squeaky” first.

Still grinning, he bends down to pick up the letter and walks over to his bed, sitting down while slicing open the envelope with his finger. He hasn’t gotten any letter from her in the entire past week and he knows that it’s silly because he met her only once before he shipped out to Vietnam but no matter how bad the day was, if he gets a letter from Kassandra, it never fails to turn out well in the end.

Well then… he can’t help it and before he starts reading it, he sniffs it, just for a moment. She never perfumes her letters, like other girls like to do with the letters to their soldiers but he could swear that he can still smell that wonderful flowery scent she wore on the day they met on the paper. It was a bitter cold day in early January but she still smelled like spring and that’s what he’ll always remember about that day.

Alright, that and the poisoned darts of well placed anti-war protest rhetoric she’d thrown at him the moment she opened her mouth for the first time. She’s special that way, his Kassandra.

Oh good God, when did that start?

He shakes his head and tries to concentrate on her letter, tries to shut out the sound of helicopters drifting over from the heliport and the nagging voice that keeps wondering how bad Lieutenant Cadman was really wounded. He squeezes his eyes shut and makes himself stop that before getting back to the letter.

Hello Soldier! (I have been informed that this is the proper way of greeting your soldier pen pal when writing to the front. I am also expected to incorporate kisses on the cheek or hugs or some such nonsense somewhere in this letter. However, my sources are mostly freshman students that have never left their hometowns before coming to Colorado College, so as of yet, I remain unconvinced of the truthfulness of those statements.)

At that, he has to grin. Of course she does. She might be a mere English lecturer at her alma mater, Colorado College, but she has a sharp, scientific mind – he’d never admit that to anyone and least of all her but he has a sneaking suspicion that she’s pretty much smarter than he – and she never takes anything at face value.

Except, of course, stupid Zoomie Lieutenants, sent to her school mere days before they ship out to war to do some community outreach. Good God, she’d really made him look bad when she’d asked about civilian casualties in the Vietnam war compared to civilian casualties in the last war in front of the entire assembly hall.

And then she’d shot him down pretty violently when he’d gone to her later, to apologize for  his lack of information on the matter. As it turned out, an apology was the last thing she’d wanted from him, or any soldier at all.

Well, anyway, he’s got a letter to read.

How are you? I’ve been hearing a lot about “pushes” and “ambushes” and what not lately and I know that you’re not posted to any firebases or whatever they’re called but I know that you’re supposed be out there, flying around and rescuing people and well, a girl worries. Please tell me anything you are allowed to tell me, without any false regard for my “feminine sensitivities”.

She still claims not to be interested in any official government news or the correct use of military lingo but she’s still doing a pretty fine job of that and it nearly frightens him to think that she might do that for him somehow. It does sound conceited and selfish but… a man can dream, right?

Also, how’s your commanding officer? He seems to be a decent sort and I have to confess I have an insatiable thirst for gossip so, is he still going out with the temperamental WAC Lieutenant? I can’t imagine how that is supposed to work, being in a war zone and everything. Are the WACs even allowed to wear civilian clothing or make-up? I can’t imagine feeling (or looking) the least bit feminine in those ghastly green uniforms and I most certainly can’t imagine feeling attractive in them.

Ah, Kass, he wants to sigh. As if that is the biggest problem about a Major sleeping with a Lieutenant in a combat zone. Sometimes, for all her amazing brains, she’s a little bit naïve, showing that she’s just as much a country girl as he’s a country boy. There are no words to describe for how much that makes him smile, how much he loves that about her.

And speaking of Lieutenant Cadman… dammit, he’d been so resolved not to think about that. There had been men much more severely wounded on that flight. He’d tried not to look too closely, to concentrate on flying the chopper but he’d caught glimpses of blood dripping on the floor and he’d heard fragments of moaning and crying through the noise of the rotor blades and once again he’d wondered how Lorne and Meyers and McPherson could just go on and do their jobs, seeming to be wholly unimpressed by the suffering around them.

But yeah, as soon as they’d unloaded the patients and they’d been wheeled towards 3rd Army Field Hospital, he’d forgotten about them, as he’s trying to do with all their patients. Except, well, Laura Cadman. He’d looked after her exiting the chopper and running towards the medical facilities directly adjourned to the Heliport, pressing a hand against her left upper arm and he’d gotten glimpses of blood on her face and her neck and when he’d turned around to start post-flight with his boss, Major Lorne had been as white as a sheet.

Lorne had said nothing, just methodically checked the chopper for bullet holes and other damage, ticking off his check list and all the while looking just like he did on the day that Charlie Williamson died. It’s funny, somehow. Those were the probably three most terrible days in his entire life and all he really remembers, in all his nightmares is Major Lorne’s face after Williamson slipped away. White, white as a ghost and bar all emotions, his eyes old and so, so tired.

Shit. Shit shit shit. It’s all back again, just like that. The machine gun fire and the diffuse fear and Lorne’s face and he needs to get out of here, out in the open, away from his claustrophobic, damp, hot quarters.

Without really thinking about it, he jumps up, clatters down the stairs and briskly walks away from the BOQ, towards the Heliport and before he knows it, he’s standing in front of the medical facilities and only then does he realize that he still holds Kassandra’s letter in his hand.

For a moment, he’s so disoriented that all he does is look around and squint into the sinking sun, crumbling the letter as his fingers slowly close around it. Then the sound of an approaching gunship washes over him like a cold shower and he realizes he must have been staring at the sinking sun for at least a minute.

Realizing that he must look pretty stupid standing around like this, he slowly starts walking again and his feet carry him over to the benches someone placed in front of the medical facilities. Okay, so he has no idea why he just walked up here but since he’s here and doesn’t have to be anywhere else right now, he can very well sit down. Somehow, the thought of going back to his cramped quarters doesn’t sound so appealing, either.

Okay, so… where was he? Ah, right.

Oh, dash it, just listen to me. I must sound so terribly conceited and superficial and I profoundly apologize (to the Lieutenant as well, for I am sure that she’s doing a terrific job and that looking feminine is the least bit of her worries at the moment!).

One of the most amazing things about Kassandra Wilson is that she will never cease to be able to make him laugh. Even after such a… weird and quite frankly frightening experience like what just happened to him, he just can’t help laughing at the image of Laura Cadman standing in front of a mirror, applying make-up and curling her hair while trying to find the most flattering way to wear a uniform as ugly as jungle greens.

So, okay, it’s not like he never saw her in civilian clothes but… no. Just… no. Grinning he continues reading.

I’m sure that the Lieutenant is a perfectly nice girl and very apparently, your commanding officer could see past the uniform, so I will hold my silly trap and say no more. But do tell me if they’re still an item (I confess, I can be very silly and romantic, if I put my mind to it, please don’t laugh!).

Oh good God, does she know how some of the things she writes to him sound? Did she actually intend to make an innuendo and honestly, on the list of things he tries very hard not to imagine, thinking about what his boss and Cadman are doing behind closed doors ranks in the top five. Top three, actually. Jesus H. Christ, Kassandra.

But, okay, he’ll try to give her an account of those last few crazy weeks, of how even he managed to notice that Lorne looks less like death warmed over when he’s around Cadman, about how Cadman seems to be less of a cynic in Lorne’s presence. Her big romantic country girl heart will love that.

Alright, so… where… ah, yes.

Aside from that, please let anyone know that some of us might be misguided but the great majority of those of us who do not support the war can distinguish perfectly well between this terrible war and the soldiers fighting and dying in it. I still think it is unjust and illegal but I also think that neither of you deserves the vitriol that some are spewing on you.

Wow, where did that just come from? Could it be that… his staunch anti-war pen pal who could only be silenced in her anti-war speech by him telling her that he would be shipping out in only a few days… could it be that she got in a fight because she defended him? He wouldn’t put it past her, seeing as even on that one not-date they went on because he insisted on buying her dinner to apologize for his ignorance during the talk he could see very clearly that Kassandra Wilson is a girl not afraid of a challenge, someone who’s not going to back down from anyone if she thinks she’s right, when she’s defending people who currently can’t defend themselves, not even the people whose side she is supposed to be on.

She’s… amazing that way. And not just a little bit scary.

You are a good person, Joe, and I’m sure that your friends and crew are, too. You all deserve to be brought home and be with your loved ones and your friends. That is what I will keep fighting for, all the way until each and every one of you is back here, safe and sound. Please forgive me that I will do this instead of unquestioningly supporting this war. All I want is to have you home, Joe.

That… that’s not what he’d expected. Maybe an account of the latest protest she went to or stories about what the government is doing to people not toeing the line or just anything political. But straight up telling him that she wants him home, something so personal… that frightens him. Scares him right down to his bones, scares the living daylights out of him.

He’s got about two months until his tour is over and he knows that both the Sergeants are positive that they’ll re-up and Lorne didn’t seem to averse to the idea, either, for whatever reason. He even overheard Cadman and her Air Force nurse friend talking about both considering to re-up and stay another year and until now, he’d strongly considered joining the rest of the gang. But all of a sudden… re-upping doesn’t sound like such a good idea anymore.

At least… it doesn’t sound half as good as going home, going back to Colorado Springs, going back to Miss Kassandra Wilson. Now, there’s an idea… no, better not think about it now. Just finish the letter and not think about all of those pictures she sent him that are sitting safely tucked away in his footlocker, of those two tape recordings she sent him, of that one totally botched up phone call they had four months ago. Just finish the damn letter.

But oh no, this became unexpectedly bleak and weepy, so I will try to cheer you up a little with what happened at the faculty party last week…

“Oh, Lieutenant Simmons… is something wrong with your quarters?” He blinks and looks up from his letter, seeing Captain Maureen Reece standing in front of him, in jungle greens decked with ominous dark spots all over her right upper body and a scrub cap on her head, her red curls trying to escape from it at every angle. He’s not sure if it might be the glaring lighting from the flood lights above but she looks like she could use a solid twenty-four hours of sleep. Or a seven day pass to farthest location possible.

He clears his throat, wondering if it might earn him a ticket to the shrink division if he told her that he’d felt as if he’d suffocate back in his quarters. “No, I just… I…”

“Yeah,” she says and sits down next to him, pulling off the scrub cap and freeing her hair before working on tying back again, “sometimes I get that, too.”

Apparently, the both of them have been too long in Vietnam because he doesn’t doubt for even a minute that she wasn’t just telling him that to fuck with his mind. She knows exactly what he was trying not to say and it scares the crap out of him that he can be so sure about that. Re-upping is starting to look like a decidedly bad idea.

She sits next to him, her eyes closed and he realizes that despite knowing exactly what she meant, he doesn’t really know her all that well. He sometimes accompanies his boss to Le Van Loc, just for a glass of bourbon or, two, silently raising it to his father who served in Korea and was never the same afterwards and he gets to view the five of them in action.

At first he’d been appalled at how freely the alcohol flows with this set of officers and how little Cadman resembled the image of what his mother calls a “city lady” and how detached Reece had sounded when she’d talked about her work and how Major Moore didn’t fit any of the criteria of “an officer and a gentleman” and how ungentlemanly his boss sometimes talked to Lieutenant Cadman and how Simon DeLisle didn’t do anything against the slandering of his reputation when people started to empty those buckets of CIA complicity accusations over his head.

But then he’d seen how Moore would always give up his seat if it meant for Captain Reece to have a better one and how Lorne always made sure Cadman would get home safely and how DeLisle took care of both his fellow officers without ever overstepping the bounds of a warrant officer. And only a few days ago, he’d incidentally seen Captain Reece take care of a seriously drunk Major Moore in the middle of the night and well, whatever Cadman does with Lorne, it seems to make him a lot less stern and unsociable.

He tries not to sound like he’s prying when he says, “Ma’am? Are you alright?”

She jumps a little, opening her eyes and seemingly needing a moment to realize that she’s still on base, not somewhere over Vietnam in her “Bou”. She shakes her head and runs a hand over her face. “Yeah, I’m good. I just sometimes help out the Army Nurses in the shag triage room when we’re on call and there are no sorties and well… we’ve been on call for two days now.”

Trying to comprehend, he slowly nods. “And… it’s been two busy days?”

That makes her snort and utter a very unladylike “Hell to the yeah,” before she seems to remember that she’s in the company of Joseph “Squeaky” Simmons, the stuffiest officer under thirty in all of Vietnam. Possibly in the entire Air Force. The thing he hates most about that assumption is that he recently started to think that it might actually be true. “Anyway, what have you been reading? Letter from home?”

A little embarrassed, he rubs his neck and for a moment, he considers simply telling her yes and just skirting around the issue, as so that he doesn’t have to tell her an outright lie. But there’s something about her, maybe because of her profession or her tired, friendly face, that makes him want to tell her about Kassandra and the letters she’s been writing him and the impossible urge to sit in her tiny Colorado Springs apartment and listen to her talk, just listen and fall asleep to the sound of her voice. “Something… like that, yes. It’s… it’s from a girl back stateside.”

It makes her smirk and ten months ago he probably would have found it horrifying to watch a lady make that kind of face but ten months in a war zone have taught him to know better than trying to make any remark about it. Besides, it doesn’t look so bad on her. “Better not let anyone know you’ve got a girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Well. The gentleman doth protest too much. It’s exactly what she must be thinking now, even though her face doesn’t give it exactly away. But damn, even he’d be thinking that some evil force takes over his brain and he can’t help starting to blubber, “Well, she’s not my girlfriend, just a girl friend. I’m not… we’re not…”

“Better not let anyone know that, either.” But why the hell ever not, he wants to ask but he recognizes an attempt to rescue him from making a grave mistake that would expose him to merciless teasing both from the gang and from the Sergeants, even if it comes in the disguise of Maureen Reece smirking again and rolling her eyes.

For some reason, suddenly a question occurs to him, one that she and only a handful others are probably the only ones qualified to answer. He clears his throat. “Ma’am…”

“What is it?”

It’s amazing that she’s still more laconic than anything, that she still hasn’t grown tired of Lieutenant Squeaky and he feels marginally encouraged to say, “Can I ask you something?”

She nods. “Sure, just shoot.”

Okay, so how to go about this?

Mh. Maybe Cadman is right. Maybe a good offence is the best defense or something. “How bad, I mean how well would Major Lorne take it if I decided not to sign on for another tour?”

That… came out in just a bit too much of a jumble and he’s absolutely not surprised to see bewilderment on her face. “You never really got to know your boss, huh?”

He is surprised, though, that this is her answer. A little unsure of how to go on, he tentatively asks, “Ma’am?”

She shakes her head, in an expression of fatigue that he thinks isn’t there just because she’s been on her feet for probably more than twenty-four hours and his confusion about her remark about not really knowing his boss absolutely does not get cleared up when she says, “Just don’t get killed and go home to your little not-girlfriend when your tour is over, Joe. You’re a good person and this isn’t a war for you. Get out of it as fast as you can.”

Nope, not answered at all. He decides to be daring. “I’m… not sure what this has to do with how Major Lorne might view it if I don’t opt for a second tour, ma’am.”

Now she looks a little like her patience is starting to wean and she’s considering to tell him to just fuck off but then again, she’s not Major Moore and she’s probably used to dealing with not so bright males asking her stupid questions. She is dealing with wounded Marines on a daily basis, after all. “That’s exactly what he’d tell you if you asked him about his opinion on doing a second tour.” Does she… does she mean that Major Lorne thinks he’s a clueless country bumpkin who just can’t cut it in a place like Vietnam? “I think he thinks of you as a highly skilled co-pilot but Joe, some people just aren’t made for this war and believe me, that’s a thing to be damn proud of.”

He fails to see how anyone wearing a uniform could be proud of being called a dishonor and a failure for that uniform, how anyone swearing to defend his country in war could be proud of “not being made for this war”. He wants to tell her something to that effect but she’s faster. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Almost not daring to, he manages to shake his head and she smiles a small, sad smile that he has never seen on her carefully guarded face before. “You know, I joined the Air Force Nurse Corps five years ago, after college. I needed a way to pay off my tuition fees and until I got to ‘Nam, I never even left my home state, except for training assignments. You wouldn’t believe how insecure and scared out of my pants I was when I came here ten months ago. I was… God, I was twenty-six and I went about life like a girl of twenty.” He hadn’t known a single thing of that, mainly because she never mentioned it in his presence but then again, he’d never asked, had he?

She leans back, staring off into space and for a moment she looks exactly like that thousand yard stare he keeps seeing in Marines’ eyes on firebases all over Vietnam. “Sometimes, I miss that girl.”

And that, for some strange, unidentifiable reason makes him see what she meant when she said “some people aren’t made for this war” and how she could think that that’s a thing to be proud of. Why she sounded a bit like she envied him “not being made for this war”. He leans back himself, not daring to look at her and fumbling for words until the only thing that comes to him tumbles out of his mouth, “Oh, ma’am, since I’m here, anyway…  I’d just like to ask if you maybe know something about Lieutenant Cadman?”

It wasn’t supposed to sound so, well, timid, but she seems to take it in stride, doesn’t even take time to mock him about it and just gives him a little deadpan grin when she says, “She’ll be okay, don’t worry. As long as she can whine about her camera while a nurse is digging bits of broken glass out of her cheek, she’s gonna be fine.”  

That… that sounds terrible and he wonders how she can actually joke about bits of broken glass in anyone’s face – most of all her friend’s face – but looking at her, he realizes that this is an attempt at humor, an attempt at reassuring him by being purposefully casual and he can’t help but appreciate the try, even though he will probably never understand nurses humor. And anyway… “Get up, Lieutenant, we just got an emergency call.” Why did his boss just come running out of the medical facility? “Oh, Captain Reece. Can you…”

“Don’t worry, sir, she’ll stay with me tonight.” Huh, who… oh, right. Oh. Right. Of course Lorne wouldn’t simply go to his quarters when his girlfriend is in need of medical attention. Somehow knowing that Lorne forwent possible rest to stay at Cadman’s side doesn’t sit so bad with him all of a sudden.

His CO doesn’t really acknowledge him for a moment, though, and keeps addressing Reece. “Look, I don’t want to inconvenience…”

“Yes, you may come around when you’re back from your sortie, sir.” Did she… just encourage Lorne to break the sanctity of the women officers’ BOQ? “Just try not to wake the guard detail, please. They can be… jumpy.” Fucking hell, yes, she did.  

“Trust me, I know.” Oh. Oh good. His commanding officer knows the guards at the women BOQ. He knows they’re “jumpy”. Good. Great. “Come on, Joe, we’re on.” Huh, what?

Oh, right, Lorne wants him to follow him to the chopper for just another night rescue sortie. Apparently, it’s urgent since he doesn’t even stay to acknowledge Reece murmuring, “Take care, sir.” She just reacts with rolling her eyes and turns to him, “And you, too, Lieutenant.”

That kind of… takes him unawares. Reece never struck him as someone prone to displaying deep affection openly, let alone casual friendship so he’s confused enough that he resorts to babbling again. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” And, because he’s an idiot, he can’t help adding, “And, ma’am?”

She raises her eyebrow, looking scarily like Moore when he wants to communicate that you just majorly annoyed him. “What?”

He nearly chickens out because it suddenly seems to be too trivial to even say it but then again, he learned things about Maureen Reece today he’d never even thought about before and sometimes, the things that appear trivial are those no one ever says. He forces himself to look her in the eye. “I think you’re a good person, too.”

At that, she just rolls her eyes but he’s pretty sure that she’s actually blushing and no one can convince him otherwise. Even telling him, “Get going, Lieutenant,” with a sufficient amount of irritation isn’t exactly helping and he knows he shouldn’t treat a lady and an officer like that but he just can’t help grinning at her before turning around and running towards the Heliport.

As he straps himself in, map in his lap and doing a pre-flight instrument check, he throws his boss a short look and he realizes that he’ll never be able to exhibit the stone-cold stoicism that Lorne never loses, not even under enemy fire, not even when he just lost his brother-in-law. He realizes that this isn’t who he wants to be and he realizes that he needs to get back to the US, out of this country, as fast as he possibly can. And damn, does he need to get back to Kassandra Wilson.

The Jolly Green Giant takes off and in between checks and communication with the ground, he hears Lorne say, “So, thought about re-upping, Lieutenant?” as if he’s a goddamn psychic.

Well then. Time to face the music, huh? He doesn’t even have to clear his throat before he says, “Yeah, about that, sir…” and really, it may not be the best time to tell his boss that he’ll have to go looking for a new co-pilot soon but then again, no time’s a good time for that, so what the hell, huh?

Chapter Text

America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All)

“America has heard the bugle call
And you know it involves us, one and all
I don’t suppose that war will ever end
There’s fighting that will break us up again.”

Johnny Wright, “Hello Vietnam”

So this is the fabled ‘Nam, huh? Dirt and heat and kerosene fumes and did he mention the goddamn dirt yet. And Jesus fucking Christ, the fucking heat. He honestly thought that having been stationed in New Mexico ever since two years ago prepared him somewhat for serving in Vietnam but he should have believed all those guys who told him that nothing could adequately prepare you for arriving in SEA. Not even the older officers who’d had some experience in the Pacific in the Forties had managed to tell them how exactly it would be and now look at him, sweating like a pig in his service dress. Fucking hell.

He throws a look to his right, at Lieutenant Jenna Wells, general’s daughter, Air Force Times reporter and just this side of helicopter crazy. Okay, basically just any aircraft but she really developed a weird special fascination for choppers that nearly cost him his promotion a year ago. Or, well, his stupid decision to give in to her cajoling and begging to let her have “just one short flight, please, please, please” did. Either way, it makes him just a little bit smug to see that she doesn’t look any better than he currently feels.

But damn, he’s just a little bit jealous that she’s allowed to wear something as marginally more practicable in this climate as a skirt. What wouldn’t he give for some damn shorts right now.

At least she looks like she’s starting to regret her decision to snap at him when he’d offered to help her carry her luggage, going all Women’s Lib on him and telling him to stop treating her like a simpering female who couldn’t even lift her own purse. Well, there you go, Lieutenant “I can carry that on my own!” he thinks and can just barely resist to smirk. So, where the hell is their ride to Tan Son Nhut Air Base?

He looks at Wells again and she’s staring back defiantly, probably dying to spit something like “Great job at getting us lost already, Captain High and Mighty” at him. He just rolls his eyes and gets back to scanning their surroundings for anything or anyone that might indicate where they’re supposed to turn to next. He is senior rank around here, after all.

So… Marines, Marines, Marines, and, surprise, even more Marines and the next one that is stupid enough to try and hit on Wells will get their “some”, hopefully in the form of a hearty slap or getting their toes crushed by Wells. If there was ever a WAF not shy about physically impairing anyone dim-witted enough to even look at her the wrong way, it’s Lieutenant Jenna Wells. Sometimes, even he is scared of her.

Goddammit, why isn’t there… oh. Oh. Uh-oh. He clears his throat. “Lieutenant?”

“What?” Apparently, the heat and the dirt and the kerosene fumes and the many, many harrowing hours of flight sure didn’t have any mellowing effect on the grumpiness she’s been famous for at Cannon AFB ever since she arrived around the same time as he.

He tries not to sigh. “Didn’t you say your new CO is a WAC?”

She eyes him suspiciously. “Yes. Why?”

“Because I think I just found our ride,” he says, jerking his head towards a fairly odd looking couple leaning against a dusty jeep with their arms folded in front of their chests.

Did she just mumble “The fucking hell?” under her breath?

God, he hopes not because wherever she got that from, the General will make him responsible for it. Ever since he let himself be persuaded to take her for a little joyride in his Huey and her father got wind of it the General thinks that whatever inappropriate thing his daughter did now, it’s his fault.

Then again, that’s about the same thing he just thought when he spotted them. They’re a man and a woman, both wearing what they call jungle greens around here and big aviators’ sunglasses. The guy’s wearing an Air Force garrison cap with something looking suspiciously like oak leaves glittering in the sun while the female soldier is wearing what the guys coming back from Vietnam call a boonie hat with the sides buttoned up and he thinks he just saw Captain’s bars on her lapels. And… good God, is that a cigarette hanging in a corner of the Major’s mouth?

Ah great, the pair just caught sight of them and… both turn back to dig something out of the jeep in a perfectly synchronized movement… “Ah, shit.”

“Knowing you haven’t lost your ability to read greatly reassures me. Sir.” Haha, very funny, Wells, he thinks and just glares at her to get her moving towards the two officers holding up hand-painted signs with their respective names on them, the Captain snatching the cigarette out of the Major’s mouth. Rolling her eyes, Wells complies and they make their way over to the officers.

When they get there, he tries to feel not too embarrassed, seeing as those two look like they don’t even register the heat and the dirt in their rumpled jungle greens. He can very well see that there’s a grin tugging at both their mouths but he decides to not let him keep that from executing a textbook report, including a sharp salute – from the corner of his eyes he can see that Wells at least didn’t want to be outdone by him in that and follows suit – and saying, “Captain Matthew Kemp and Lieutenant Jenna Wells reporting for duty as ordered, sir.”

Damn, what is there to laugh about, he wants to snap at the Captain who can barely hide her amusement but the Major is faster. Instead of returning the salute, though, he just puts the sign away and sticks out his hand, saying, “Major Evan “Fortune Cookie” Lorne, your new CO. Pleased to meet you, Captain,” in a voice that very clearly states that he’s probably just as amused as the Captain.

Not quite sure how to react, he hesitates a moment before taking the Major’s hand and shaking it. “Pleased to meet you, too… sir.”

Lorne nods and then points towards the Captain next to him whose dead pan look even penetrates the shades she’s still wearing. He’s addressing Wells now. “Captain Laura “Crackers” Cadman, Women’s Army Corps. Your new boss, Lieutenant.”

He’s pretty sure that the Captain just rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses as she murmurs, “Seriously, Cookie?” while sticking out her hand towards Wells. “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”

Wells looks pretty much like she has no idea how to react to this and like she thinks their new COs must be either fucking with their minds or out of theirs. It’s amazing how much she looks like her father in moments like those. Amazing and downright scary.

In the end, Wells manages to cover up her bewilderment with taking Cadman’s hand and telling her that she’s pleased to meet her although he’s pretty sure he detected more than one sign in Wells’s body language that told him that she’s anything but pleased.

“Alright, enough with the introduction. Crew’s waiting on the tarmac, so throw in your baggage and hop in, Airmen,” Lorne tells them then, sounding a little less relaxed and a bit more business-like than just a moment before. But for some reason being included in the “Airmen” seems to have smoothed Wells’s feathers a bit and he’s kind of grateful for that. He doesn’t really mind Wells’s bluestocking moods but he’s not sure how well anyone else would be able to handle them.

Then again, Lorne doesn’t seem to mind that Cadman nearly succeeds in securing the driver’s seat and what is it that’s rubbing him wrong about those two, anyway?

At first he thought it was the casual attire but then again, they’re in a war zone and from the very few things the guys at Cannon who’ve been over here told them he could gauge that things are… different here so jungle greens and Ray Bans at every opportunity are probably just par for the course. Then, when they got in the car and Cadman kept smoking the cigarette she’d stolen from Lorne freely, he’d thought that he was maybe channeling his mother who thinks smoking is something ladies just don’t do but seriously, he’d never really believed in that, anyway.

He looks at Wells and she just rolls her eyes again. What? What in God’s name is she trying to… “Okay, kids, that’s our stop. Everyone get out and into the chopper.”

Chopper? He doesn’t… that’s not a Huey. That is very, very much not a fucking Huey. That’s… a monster. “Never seen a Jolly Green Giant before, Captain?”

That just can’t be right. “Well, yes, but I’m not exactly HH-3 qualified. There must have been a mistake somewhere…”

“Your file said you received training for three different helicopter types, the HH-3 among them. No mistake at all, Captain.” Well, yes, okay, he’d gotten an introduction and he has three or four flight hours on a Jolly Green Giant under his belt but… he’s a Huey pilot. A goddamn gunship pilot who can fly combat, dust-off, everything that involves fast reaction, steady nerves and bad ass superhuman reflexes. He loves being a Huey pilot. He never wanted to be anything but a Huey pilot.

He fumbles around for words, trying to ignore Wells’s annoyed stare and Cadman’s curious gaze. “Look, sir, there really must have been a mix-up here or something. I haven’t been flying HH-3s in ages and…”

“You’re a chopper pilot, right?” Oh. That look on Lorne’s face… doesn’t look good?

Sensing that he’s walking straight into a deadly trap, he swallows and tries to be brave nonetheless. “Yes, sir, but…”

“So let’s fly this chopper.” For someone looking so relaxed just ten minutes ago, Lorne sure isn’t good with taking no for an answer now.

Still, he’s not going to go down without a fight. “Sir, I’m really not…”

“Get in and put your damn ass in front of the damn stick, Captain. That’s an order.” Okay, maybe he is.

“Yes, sir.” Damn, that can’t be a good way to start off a tour.

And Wells isn’t helping much either, hissing, “Way to go, Captain Idiot,” at him when they unload their baggage to carry it over the tarmac towards the chopper and what does she care about how he ruins his work relationship with his boss, anyway?

The only reason he doesn’t snap at her and tell her to keep her nose out of his damn business is that they’ve reached the monster of a chopper and that after a loud whistle from Lorne two guys jump down from the roof, Sergeant’s stripes on their arms. They’re wearing shades as well, one of them white and maybe in his late thirties or early forties and the other black and possibly in his late twenties. Lorne speaks up again. “Captain Kemp, Lieutenant Wells, these are Senior Master Sergeant Robert McPherson, crew chief and door gunner and Master Sergeant Will Meyers, Pararescue jumper and medic. Mac, Meyers, those are Captain Matthew Kemp, our new co-pilot and Lieutenant Jenna Wells, Captain Cadman’s new reporter.”

The Sergeants both stick out their hands and he moves to shake them, not sure how this is going to go. From the look of it, they must have been as long in Vietnam as Lorne and it occurs to him just now that he’s barging in a team that’s probably been through hell in the last twelve months. Just fucking great.

Oh, and there goes Lieutenant Wells ogling the monster chopper with a glint in her eyes that you usually see in girls in adverts for diamond engagement rings. She’s gonna be so disappointed when she gets one of those instead of her very own chopper, if she ever gets married.

Cadman seems to have seen it, too and the fact that she doesn’t comment on it, just looks a little amused as she puts her pilot helmet on – wait, why does she even have that and why are there an Air Force crest and the words “Off with one helluva roar!” elaborately painted on the front? – counts immensely in her favor. He might think Wells to be a bit of a nerd but that doesn’t mean he’s going to accept anyone actually calling her that to her face.

Anyway… good God, why is there the crest of the Women’s Army Corps on one side and the words “Property of Women’s Army Corps” painted on Lorne’s helmet? What the fuck is going on here? “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen helmet graffiti before, Captain.”

Dammit, is that guy psychic? Also, there’s no reason to sputter like he’s doing, “No, not… up close, sir, but it’s… um…”

“You got a call sign, Kemp?” Huh, what?  

“Yes he does and it’s Hermit.” Jesus fucking Christ, Wells. Who gave you a damn headset?

And no, sir, there’s no reason to sound so derisive when saying, “Hermit, Captain?” while switching on the rotors and easing the monster into the air with a grace he’d never have associated with an HH-3.

He clenches his jaw and tries to sound final instead of pleading. “Don’t ask, sir.” Which, obviously, didn’t work at all.

Thankfully, Wells is so in awe of the HH-3 that she doesn’t sit down like any normal passenger aboard a chopper would do but keeps staggering around, distracting everyone from his stupid call sign and pestering both McPherson and Meyers with all kinds of technical questions about the monster. What really astounds him, though, is how readily both answer her and as far as he can hear from the fragments drifting through the concentration of having to fly unfamiliar aircraft over unfamiliar territory, they don’t sound nearly as annoyed as the guys at Cannon AFB did whenever Wells went to pepper them with her questions and observations.

The strange warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing someone not treating her like a freak for being more interested in the aircraft than in the guys flying them is pretty much disruptive to his flying and he decides to ignore it.

It’s not helping that Lorne is used well enough to this bird to throw around questions like, “Is it normal for Air Force women to be so overly interested in the technical properties of helicopters?” though.

He looks ahead, cursing himself for forgetting to pack his goddamn shades and squints into the sun while he tries to sound not too miffed with what Lorne just insinuated. “It sure is normal for this Air Force woman.”

“Oh, you guys have a history.” More a statement than a question and he gives Lorne bonus points for keeping his tone neutral instead of lewd. He’s just so tired of everyone thinking he let Wells into his Huey so she would let him into her pants. He has no interest whatsoever in her pants.

But just for caution’s sake, he decides to be non-committal. “Kind of.”

He expects Lorne to try and find out more about this “kind of” kind of history but the Major surprises him again, saying, “Is there any way I can get her to stop looking so longingly?”

Not really sure what Lorne just meant, he turns around to throw a look over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of Wells sitting on one of the empty cots in the HH-3’s cargo room, looking like a little girl that just saw the pony of her dreams. He can just barely keep from sighing. “There might be one…”

“Ah, I think I got an idea.” He… does? “Hey, Lieutenant, you ever saw a Giant’s controls?” Ah, where the hell is that going now?

“No, sir.” It’s kind of cute how Wells just tried to sound very confident and disinterested when even people who don’t know her could have heard the yearning fromm one mile away.

“Come on up and have a look.” And in that moment he just knows that he’ll follow Lorne into hell and back when he has to. He’d been ready to hate the guy for the entire twelve months just for implying that Wells wasn’t “normal” and then he goes and calls her up to the cockpit as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, just to stop her looking so longingly at all the beautiful controls that must seem like candy to her. That guy’s a fucking hero.

And Wells being Wells… she doesn’t wait for another invitation and comes crawling towards them, squeezing herself between Lorne and him and he can’t help keeping to throw her looks as she listens intently to Lorne explaining the controls, unconsciously biting her lip in deep concentration, just like she had when he’d let her have the controls of the Huey he flew at Cannon for a few minutes. And here he’d thought he was the only one who could give her that sparkle of absolute concentration and pleasure in her eyes.

The stab of jealousy that just gave him is the most ridiculous thing he ever experienced which is why he will never think of it again and keep on flying this monster instead.

It’s not exactly easy with Wells so close in proximity, radiating delight strong enough to power a small city for almost the entire ride to Tan Son Nhut but somehow he manages it and when Lorne puts his pair of shades into his hands with the words, “I expect them back as soon as you got yourself decent ones at the PX,” after exiting the Giant, he can’t help hoping that he might not miss the Hueys as much as he feared he would when he laid his eyes on the monster for the first time, after all.

After that, it’s off to camp registration and then the male officers’ BOQ first and off to the WAFs second and he’s pretty sure that if it were just them, Wells wouldn’t stop gushing about the flight. She looks ready to burst and when Lorne and Cadman have dropped them off at the PX after Cadman “ordering” them to join the “rest of the gang” at the local Vietnamese Air Force’s officers club tonight, he can’t fight the urge to say, “So… what do you think?”

Of course she immediately starts flooding him with technical data she gathered from the Sergeants and the greatness that is being allowed, even required to be a passenger in a chopper and maybe it’s the jet lag or the exhaustion of his first day in this strange, hot country but somehow, all of a sudden, it doesn’t bother him so much anymore. Maybe, just maybe being stationed in Vietnam with Jenna Wells of all people isn’t going to be so bad, after all. A guy can hope, can’t he?