#I wish there were more battles tho

[nothinmuch6]

Cast of dimension 20 + stims (8/?)

[maxaroniiiii]

sea urchin man

[kittyandco]

i've been replaying kh 3 (despite not having finished it because when it released life just threw 1239893849 things at me and the horrors haven't ceased) and i'm in arendelle. almost halfway through. i want to play it. but out of spite i don't want to finish it. but i also want to fight my husband

(rambling in tags)

[merriclo]

bro just beat totk. goddamn.

[orcelito]

I take back... SOME of my negativity about fe:engage. Now that I'm out of prolog hell I have decided the fun eclipses the annoyances. For now.

[angryborzois]

usually im not that hyped over jjk BUT DAMN I GOTTA SAY THIS EPISODE WAS ACTUALLY SO AMAZING

[supermacaquecool]

Jdjdjfkkfkf okay I'm starting to catch on how funny it is that I already lost interest. I can sink over 70 hours on a game I don't even like if it's Digimon, but is my limit 20 with other ones?

[randomgurl2326]

Adam Relationship Headcannons

SFW

You two met after the whole Lilith and Eve debacle

You were sent to be his Guardian Angel down in the Garden of Eden. Honestly, he couldn’t care less about Eve when he first saw you

He was in the middle of the garden, talking to Eve and then you show up… man’s whipped. Simp I tell you

(Actually wished that you were made to be his wife instead of the baddie Lilith or the goodie-two-shoes Eve)

Again. Whipped.

Now, tho is guy… whewww. He may seem incredibly misogynistic to practically everyone around him. But he can be a total sweetheart

He would—if you didn’t know how to already—teach you how to shred on the guitar

Speaking of guitars, that gold strat that he had during the battle in the last episode is only used during a special occasion (case and point, when you two have a date night or after sex)

He also serenades you every chance he gets

After dinner

After a meeting

After sex

After just walking the goddamn promenade

I also think he would be heavenly (ha! See what i did there? No? Okay…) in the kitchen. Especially for date night. Adam knows how to make the best prime rib in heaven

(Lute totally hasn’t tried to blackmail the recipe out of him)

Adam is also very insecure about how he looks under his mask

Especially after having two wives ditch him for Lucifer

He definitely needs to be praised on a daily basis, even if it seems like he’s an egotistical asshole

Every day you tell him how handsome he is and he doesn’t believe you (c’mon have you seen him fuckin’ hot)

You two sometimes don’t see each other days on end because you both work so much. You being a high-ranking Angel/seraphim and him being well… the first man on Earth

If you guys go especially long for not seeing each other, you guys hole up a few days in your shared home spending time with each other among other things…

By the way, you and Lute are best friends, probably more than her and Adam

Like, seriously, if you’re not with him, you’re with her. Gossiping or fucking around, it’s heaven, there’s infinite things to do

You two are also very lovey dovey with each other

One time Sera had cover Emily’s eyes with her wings because you two were making out and feeling each other up in the middle of the Heavenly Court Room

Despite all of his faults, he’s a good husband to you, a great one actually. And if you two were to ever have kids, he’d definitely be the dad who everyone loves

He would introduce them to rock, punk, metal.

Definitely plays his guitar to get them to sleep every night

NSFW

Okay… he want lying about being the Dick Master. He can pleasure women, that is not a problem for him

Also, it might not seem like it, but he loves going down on you. Probably one of his favorite pass times actually

I swear, this man could make you scream his name within minutes. No joke

Don’t get me wrong, he loves receiving head

But just not as much as he loves eating pussy (Lilith and Eve missed out on that one for sure)

He also has a bigger dick than average

Probably 6-7.5 inches in length and hella girthy. Uncircumcised (duh), and a vein that runs up the bottom of it

Definitely knows how to use it

Every one within a five mile radius of your guys’ house… let’s just say I feel really bad for them

No joke, he is insane about pleasuring you

This probably also feeds into his insecurity about you leaving him (you won’t)

He for sure has a praise kink. Seriously, tell him he’s a good boy and he’s unraveling under your touch instantly

His favorite position is cowgirl (what can he say, he loves powerful women)

But he’s down for whatever position you want; missionary, warrior, against a wall, whatever

Speaking of wall sex, Lute has definitely caught you two more than once

The first time she did was when you two were in Adam’s office while he was supposed to be planning the next extermination. She came to ask him a question about it and there you two were. Goin’ at it like rabbits on the wall next to his desk

She couldn’t look you guys in the eye for three weeks. It was terrible

Adam also doesn’t seem like the type of guy to have sex toys or feel the need to use them

But, again, he’s whipped. So he’s willing to do whatever you want to do

Wont admit this to anyone but you, but he likes to sub every once in a while. Especially with all the ‘first man’ stuff weighing down on him he needs a way to get away from all that stress

Despite him making crude jokes about sex, he’s a very giving partner in bed

He had to make sure you cum at least twice before he gets his dick wet

Also, have I mentioned how good he is at eating pussy? Oh, I have? Yeah, well, he is (especially with that tiny bit of stubble on his chin… gahhh)

Just needed to get it out there

All in all, Adam is a very giving person in bed, can be selfish at times but will make up for it. He loves you too much for you to feel mad or upset (especially with him)

A/N: this was my first time writing for Adam and Hazbin in general. I hope you liked it. I love you all💚💜

[captainamericasmotercycle]

Can you write a Cregan Stark x Targaryen wife where she is readying to go to the battle since she is the rider of Cannibal and he is with her nervous and makes her promise to come back to him and before she leaves he tells Cannibal to take care of her, he is nervous the whole time that she is away only calming down when he sees her and Cannibal come back.

omg i love this 🥹 wc: 1.7k

warnings: reader is a targaryen (parents and family are unspecified), cannibal's rider, ooc cannibal, cregan loves his wife and will never stop, reader has silver hair and is shorter than cregan (its okay tho he's huge)

After being away all day, the only thing that Cregan wants is to be in your arms. He searches around Winterfell, looking to find a glimpse of silver hair. He finds you in your chambers, hunched over the small desk by the window.

The candle you had lit was almost gone and you didn’t hear him enter. He stalks over to you, noticing your riding clothes on the settee by the bed.

“Did you go out today, my love?” He leans over you from behind, kissing you on the cheek.

You are hesitant to respond, just staring at a message that had arrived this morning. Cregan takes a knee beside you, trying to read the message that has taken all of your attentoin grasped in your hands.

My dearest kin, the Hightower usurpers have taken the lives of the Prince Lucerys Velaryon and the Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, along with their dragons. The Rogue Prince and his dragon still remain to be of any help in our time of war. The Queen remains cautious and Vermax is still much too young to be of great help. Baela is doing the best she can on Moondancer, patrolling the East ends of the Riverlands and the Reach, but we need more. My mother has recruited mongrels to ride Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing. We need you and Cannibal, here, on Dragonstone at once — a command from the Heir to the Iron Thone.

Cregan freezes. You rub a hand over his knotted hair. He reads over the message again, and again, and again. You were going to war, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He stood from his position, making his way over to the settee where your clothes were layed out. He cleared his throat, pushing out the feelings he was having.

You followed his actions, standing from your place at the desk.

“I must go.”

“I know,” he wouldn’t look at you, running his hand over his face.

You sauntered closer to him, “Cregan, look at me.”

He turned his body and his head, but his eyes were still focused on the floor of your chambers. You walked to him, pressing your body against his and taking his face in your hand; you could feel the beginning of a beard forming.

Pushing his face, you forced him to look at you, “Talk, please.”

“I do not know what you want me to say. You must go. It was a command, so it is final. They need you.”

His tone was soft and quiet, much different than the harsh and commanding tone he usually had. He held his hands on your waist.

“When shall you go?”

You take a breath, “I shall leave at first light.”

He brought his head down to rest on your shoulder. You pull him further into you, holding the back of his head tightly.

You pull from him, getting in your shared bed. You pat the spot next to you, asking him to come to bed with you. He discards his pelts, weapons, armour, outer clothes, and shoes, and gets into bed with you.

He lays against the headboard, you lay against his chest. He wraps his large arm around you, rubbing circles into your bicep.

“Rickon…” you began, thinking of the son you had become a mother to when you and Cregan had wed.

“Rickon will be cared for only by me and any hand maids of your choosing. He will have the best education and training - your name will be spoken highly at every meal and at every sleep—”

You sniffled softly, thinking of your boy, “I do not wish for him to forget me.”

Cregan felt his eyes get hot with tears, he pulled you closer into his warmth, “He will not forget you. I will make sure of that.”

Your breathing started to stable and your grip on his arm faltered. As you slept, Cregan could not find any shut-eye, worried about you.

He watched you the whole night. Watching as your chest rose and fell, and how your silver locks were splayed across the feather pillows and across your face.

It was nearly sun-up when your husband woke you. Your eyes fluttered open, you blinked roughly a couple of times to adjust your vision. Cregan paced around the room.

Instead of your handmaiden, Cregan, himself, helped you to dress for battle. You stopped in your son’s chambers, only waking him for a second to say your farewells. You kissed him back to sleep, tucking him in tightly; tears only fell after you closed his chamber doors and headed out to your dragon.

Making your way out of the walls of Winter Town, you found Cannibal in a large field dusted with snow. At your arrival, he huffed out to greet you, trying to rub his head over your chest.

You smiled, brushing over his scales with your hand. Cannibal awaited your mounting as you turned to your husband.

Grabbing his hand, you looked at him solemnly, “My lord husband, if the Gods decide I have served my time and served Westeros well… and I do not return,” you paused to take a breath, “I want you to take another to wed. Do not spend your life grieving over me. Rickon deserves a mother and you deserve more heirs—”

He grabbed both sides of your face, “I do not want to take another to wed. I do not need more heirs. I only need you,” he shakes his head roughly, the morning light hitting his features majestically.

“I will not even look in the direction of another. I will not take another to bed or wed. I will wait at the gates of Winter Town for your arrival. I will pray every sun-up and sun-down for your safe return. You will not be forgotten and there will never be another.”

“Cregan—” he cut you off with a kiss.

“Promise me you will come back,” his brows were furrowed, his face still close to yours.

You nodded to all of your extent, “I promise. I promise.”

He kissed you feverishly once more, finally letting you go, “I will send thousands of greybeards after you. They will meet you at the battle.”

Smiling, you sighed, beginning to mount Cannibal when he called out your name loudly. You turned your head one last time towards his booming voice, “Fight hard. Like a Northerner!”

A single tear ran down your face as you took off. Cannibal screeched, his sounds filling the Northern air. Cregan waited until you were out of site before he turned back to Winterfell.

-

He kept his promise; that night he began his prayers in the Godswood, dragging Rickon along with him.

After your departure he became cold and distant from his people and his men. He would spend many weeks at a time North of the Wall, trying to distract himself from you, but never forgetting his prayers.

His bastard sister was chosen to care for Rickon, and even as his sister, he could not stand seeing another woman care for him.

After the first year, he began bringing the young lord to Castle Black with him, though he was only about 4 years old.

He would occassionally get ravens from wherever you were in battle, but after a while, the messages lessened, eventually stopping. He did not want to assume the worst, thinking you were too busy to write to him.

After tireless pleas of his advisors telling him to remarry, he had killed nearly all of them for even suggesting such a thing. He had never been tempted to take another to bed; the only thing that kept him going was thoughts of you.

He grew his beard out in those long years you were away, his face seeing many harsh winters.

His eyes were sunken, he had become someone he no longer recognized in the mirror. His son had blossomed into a strong young lad, becoming great in battle at his ripe age of seven.

Rickon and his father were very close, only really having one another. They prayed for you every morn and night together, they prayed for you over every meal, and Cregan told many stories of you to his son.

Your memory never faltered, almost as if you were still in the North.

Nearly 5 years after your departure on that cold, dark morn, whispers in the wind had said the Blacks had succeeded in taking back the throne. The realm had lost the Prince Regent, the Usurper King and his wife, the dowager queen, and the youngest hightower prince.

The Starks were at supper when Winterfell’s guards yelled from every tower and station, “Dragon!”

“Dragon!”

Cregan and Rickon immediately perked up, sharing a look and sprinting to their horses. They raced to the gates of Winter Town, shouting at everyone on the streets in their way.

Almost jumping off their horses, Cregan and Rickon watched you and Cannibal land in front of them.

You looked a lot older, your silver hair was much longer and braided up, you held a stoic and stong look on your face. Cregan could tell you had been changed by the war.

You dismounted, running through the snow to your small family. Cregan grabbed you tightly, breathing into your hair, tears overflowing.

You kissed him hard, crying through it. You held his face and smiled through your tears, “Look at this beard!”

He laughed softly, “Five years and that is the first thing you say to me?”

You notice your son standing not too far away, turning to him, you cried more. He was so grown, standing at almost 8 years of age now. You knelt, holding out your arms, “My boy.”

He ran into your embrace, squeezing you tightly. Cregan knelt with you, taking both of your bodies into his arms. Cries and sniffles surrounded your family as you reunited.

Rickon finally broke the silence, wiping your tears, he held onto your shoulder, “Tell us stories about the war! Father told be the same stories of you for years, now we have more!”

You laughed, looking at your husband, “I will tell you all about my adventures tomorrow, but now I just want to be with my family again.”

———

taglist: @wolvestitches

[suguella]

FEELS SO GOOD BUT HURTS SO BAD ꒰ ft satoru gojo ꒱

꒰ SYNOPSIS ꒱ : it feels so good sleeping with your boyfriend’s bestfriend, gojo but the consequences of it could hurt you. however, you were willing to risk it all for him.

꒰ CONTENT WARNING ꒱ : explicit content, cheating, unprotected sex, p inside v, cunningulus, oral (f), nipple play, praising, fingering and reader is a female.

꒰ AUTHORS NOTE ꒱ : thought of this idea at work and immediately started writing. sigh, gojo grew on me. am i back tho? maybe idk. no part 2s (depends), not proofread!!! explicit content so MDNI. reblog would be appreciated. enjoy, mwah.

it was wrong. you knew that but you couldn't stop yourself from meeting your boyfriends closest friend. geto would have never cared if you were just meeting gojo but in this case, "meeting" being pinned against a wall in a dark alley whilst his hands roam your body, groping the soft tissues of your breast.

so how'd it get to that?

it started when gojo would come over for geto, truth be told he would only come over to see you. he would be lying if he said he wasn't interesting in you after all you were a catch but again you were dating his best friend meaning you was off limits right? wrong, that only made him want you more.

geto was too preoccupied to talk to nanami about who knows what. gojo used his lack of interest in their conversation as an excuse to go upstairs and speak to you.

"yo y/n, haven't seen you in a while"

you turned around to see a familiar face. his eyes stayed glued to yours, those shorts you were wearing were giving him a rather hard time. you giggled, "gojo, you literally was here yesterday."

he frowned, "okay, maybe i missed you." you look up to see glowing blue eyes staring at you. looking into his eyes made you feel butterflies; gojo was in fact gorgeous, and by far one of the hottest people you've ever met.

there were times when you wanted to do things with him, specifically to fuck him, but that would be selfish. you were with geto, and he obviously cared for you, he would shower you with gifts and be the ideal boyfriend everyone would have wished for but you couldn't help but want more with gojo.

"omg, thee gojo satoru missed me?" you teased, receiving a low chuckle from gojo. you suddenly noticed the space between the two of you; it was as if your bodies moved on its own, his cologne mesmerising you. you noticed his hair concealing his face, so you tucked it back. when he felt your fingers touch him, he could not stop himself.

You felt soft lips against yours and instinctively threw your arm around his neck, tugging him down to deepen the kiss, while his hands found their way to your hips, pushing you closer to him.

his tongue swpied across your bottom lips, requesting approval in which you opened your mouth to respond. your tongue battles for dominance, resulting in you losing.

you suck on his tongue, tasting the strawberries he must have had, then draw away for breath, laying your foreheads on each other. gojos couldn't stop grinning.

that's when you heard geto yell for gojo. you froze at the thought of your lover catching you with his best friend. "get out of here before we get caught" he pressed his lips onto yours once time before leaving your room.

after that precarious situation of almost getting caught, you both decided to be more careful. you told geto you was going on a walk to clear your mind about something.

he was worried at first that he might have done something, but you reassured him right away that it was something else.

as you went done the alley, you back was pressed against the wall by none other than gojo. he wasted no time, lips finding your neck as you tugged on his hair. He sucks on your sensitive skin, leaving markings that you'd scold him for later.

he lifted your top, revealing your breast to the chilly air. His lips fall to your erect nipples, sucking on one and pulling on the other till your moans could no longer be contained.

he pulls on your clit, massaging it, making your legs feel weak, and shifts your underwear to the sides without bothering to take them off entirely.

he inserts two fingers, feeling how wet you are. “baby, you’re this wet for me?” he teased. his fingers pounded in and out of you as your walls tightened around them, causing you to gasp.

lowering himself to his knees, his hand pulling your skirt and causing it to pool at your waist. he kisses your thigh, making his way up to your pussy. His tongue laps your clit, before harshly sucking. your thighs trembled and shook from the ecstasy.

it wasn't surprising that gojo was large, but you weren't prepared for him to be that large, so you gasp in shock when he thrusts partially hard against you. you almost moaned when you saw it. it was thick, lengthy, and was dripping precum from his swollen tip.

he dragged the tip of his cock through your wet folds, teasing your clit and hole. your walls tightened around him, taking him in deeper and deeper until the swollen tip kissed your cervix. his cum painted your walls. he groaned and pulled out, kissing your forehead.

gojo held you in a bridal style as you were too sore to walk. You give in to the need to fall asleep and lean against his chest. "lets get you home, princess"

[n0tamused]

Hiya!! I have a WuWa request, how about Reader stargazing with Jiyan and them talking about some deep topic of ur choice while stargazing? Only if you’re up for it tho! Don’t push urself. Have a good day!

A/N: Thank you for your request anon! I hope you enjoy this :)

Contents: Jiyan x GN!Reader, angst and sadness

Low calls of an owl echo over the breath of the breeze, the soft sighs of nature enveloping you in its embrace. Your head is supported by the lush grass, and Jiyan’s bicep that he insisted you lay on. His tone was low and a soft timbre compared to its commanding tone when he was performing his duties. Jiyan’s body exudes warmth and comfort, and in all the ways you needed him, he was there.

“You shouldn’t be so reckless..” He’d mutter, golden eyes dark from drinking in the serene, dark scenery up above. Little stars were freckled across the sky like little faded droplets of milk, counting up to billions of the same, yet not one less beautiful than the other. 

The towering mountains sprouted from the ground so high, long rocks fingers reaching as far as possible, as if trying to grasp the fading lights and the moon itself.

“I know.. I try, Jiyan. Yet, I really can’t just stand by and watch, especially when I see you in the midst of it all, surrounded or cornered..” you respond back, quiet, not willing to disturb this serenity.

He hums, wordlessly in disagreement of your response yet he can’t bring himself to say anything in that exact moment. His mind is plagued by images of your exhausted form slumping behind a fallen tree trunk, and skin grimy with sweat and dirt. 

“I know you mean well, and you are doing your best. Yet, you are not a Midnight Ranger, love, you are not a soldier. This.. battlefield is not your place to be in” Jiyan says, his gaze leaving the midnight sky and falling on you, seeing the way your nose curved and how your eyes were much darker in the absence of a lamp or a fire. “I am the General, the leader of these men, and I don’t need you to step in for me, love..”

He sees your eyes lower to stare at nothing in particular, lashes fluttering while your throat bobbed with unease. His words rang true, but you couldn’t find yourself accepting them.  

“I need you alive... and I need you safe. While I can do my absolute best at shielding you while you are here, I cannot stand true to my promise to you if you’re jumping head first into hot water. Not when you do so behind my back”

“Jiyan… “ you sigh, trailing off, your lips opening and then closing as you try to pry your brain for a response that would get him to be more lenient, to see your side too.

“I know..” you say, your eyes finding his as you turn your face towards him. “I know.. I know you are doing your best, and I don’t wish to burden you with my-” “You are not a burden” “I know, Jiyan- let me talk.. please”

His lips press into a firm line and he gives you a small nod, encouraging you to keep going while his eyes apologize for cutting you off. One hand came to trace your cheek, he was almost laying on his side now.

“I don’t want to make your time more difficult, especially not when we’re in the middle of a battle. But don’t send me back to the city, please.. I can’t bear not being close to where I can see you. I am still useful here, perhaps not as a professional warrior or a soldier or a gunner, but I can help and I can learn too.. You talk about your promise to keep me safe, but what about our promise to stay alive... and with each other?”

Your question renders his thumbing of your cheeks slow before his fingers stop altogether in tracing your features, instead cupping the side of your face in his calloused palm. “I haven’t forgotten about that..'' he simply replies, the heaviness in his chest too great, making him unable to sigh to rid himself of it.  Fatigue hangs heavy over your heads, but neither of you are willing to cut the conversation or this moment short.

“Don’t send me back.. There is nothing for me there..” Not without you- it goes without being said, and he feels it in his bones that he can’t argue with you on this, you’ll both remain stubborn on your stances. He knows he’ll have to put restrictions on you, to keep you safe, but until then he’ll enjoy this night of reprieve with you. The tent he sleeps in feels like a bed of nettles without you, and the way he’s comfortable laying on nothing more but this lush grass speaks volumes of that. He does not feel cold or irritated. Jiyan is at peace.

But he has to send you back, he tells himself, but not yet.. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, until you forget about this conversation, and until the next cargo drop off comes in. Then, he’ll send you back.

“And we will be together, my love. You must be patient. You are my northern star in these dark nights, are you aware of that? The most precious person to me, one I hold within my heart itself.. I can’t afford to lose you..” he whispers to you as you watch him with pleading and loving eyes. You tip your chin up, brushing your nose against his and with that simple motion he is leaning in to grant your wordless wish, satiating your desire for closeness with a kiss to your lips.

The arm underneath your head stirs and he wraps it around his shoulders, bringing you in closer, flush against him, and you’re wrapping your arms around him and kissing him with fervor and unspoken love. Closer, closer, stay with me, don’t leave..

He holds you with such tender touches, holds you like you may fade away like sunlight before the long night, feather light touches tracing your cheeks and chin and moving towards the back of your head. He pulls away for a moment, his forehead pressing against yours as you both inhale the same air. “I love you” - it’s you who blurts it out before he gets the chance to do so, and his eyes widen with surprise. His heart drums in his chest, and he presses his lips to your again, in search of water to quell his worry, and for a forgiveness. Every note of love is interwoven in his actions, his touches and his kisses. Were the world any less cruel, it would have granted you two the eternity of this night, to forever be here and watch the skies in tranquility. 

Black night covers you both in a blanket of stardust and far galaxies, bringing you safety if only but this night alone, undisturbed by monsters or people. And as Jiyan pushes himself to his elbow to loom over you, chasing your lips, a lone star flies across the vast sky, flickering out and leaving behind a silver fading tail.

Maybe.. just maybe, the universe heard your wishes. 

Ⓒ n0tamused. Do not repost, translate, edit, and/or copy any of my works. Likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated.

[transmascaraa]

🥞 I woke up this morning with this idea

imagine Gaming with a reader who smiles very rarely, too rarely 🥞

bf!gaming headcannons!

he finally decided to confront you about it, and tried to help you...

bf!gaming x gn!reader

author's note: well i hope you had a great morning because I LOVE THIS IDEA. i really hope you like it cuz i genuinely think it's a great idea💗 thanks for requesting, have a good day anon, i hope the reader smiles reading this, especially if you're like the reader<3

"see? i told you i could make you smile..."

-you rarely ever smiled

-in fact, too rarely

-and your boyfriend had noticed it, but didn't want to push you about it, he didn't want to make you feel as if you were forced to smile

-so he made a bet with himself

-he can make you smile.

-well, easier said than done, simply.

-but he'll try.

-he'll do his best.

-he can do it.

-you were sitting on the couch, reading some boring fantasy book.

-and he sat next to you, putting his hand on yours.

-"hey, my love... take a break, will you? for me? i want to... ask you something." he asked, eyes deeply looking into yours.

-"oh, okay. sure." you place a bookmark on page 147, closed it, and put it on the table.

-"okay... so..." he started fidgeting with his fingers, looking down at the floor.

-"what was your question?" you reminded him, taking a sip from the glass of water that was on the table.

-he slowly looked back up, straight into your eyes.

-he can do this.

-"so... basically... you know how you like- never smile?" he asked, frowning a bit.

-"what do you mean "never"? i do smile. it's just... very rare. i just... don't. it takes too much effort... smiling." you answered him, neutral expression on your face.

-he sighed.

-how could he help?

-well, he has an idea that might work.

-"can i... try to make you smile? because... i'm concerned about you..." he said worriedly.

-"do your best." you replied, taking another sip of water before turning towards him fully.

-"thank you." and just like that, he put his hands on your cheeks.

-"you're adorable, y'know that?" he started.

-nothing.

-"i wish i could see you smile again, yeah?" he continued.

-nothing again.

-"you're really cute, has anyone ever told you that? especially when you smile?" he's not giving up.

-still nothing...

-it made you happy to hear that, yes, but you just... didn't smile.

-"i love you more than anything, okay, little lion?" he tilted his head, but the frown never left his face.

-you didn't move an inch.

-he's not losing hope yet.

-then, he thought about something...

-"are you ticklish?" he bluntly asked, the frown finally leaving his face.

-"uhm... i guess?..." you answered, a bit embarrassed...

-you saw his smile.

-his hopeful smile.

-suddenly, he started tickling you.

-everywhere.

-your belly, your neck, your waist, everywhere.

-you were laughing.

-truly.

-the two of you ended up having a tickling battle, not stopping for a second, until gaming stopped first.

-you were smiling at him.

-he was smiling so brightly back at you.

-"i love you, smiley face." he said.

-"i love you too, idiot..." you said, rolling your eyes.

-but you couldn't stop the smile on your face.

-he made you smile, even if it meant for one day, he did it.

-he did it.

~~~~~

i hope this is what you wanted anon<33

i hope you liked it nonetheless tho🫶

i loved the request and just the idea of it all is just so adorable i swear

[reputationgf]

summer went away, still the yearning stays.

kaz brekker x grisha.

genre - slight angst, fluff.

summary - Three years ago you were taken away from Kaz to Ravka to train as a Grisha, now you found your way back to him and he was your again, Kaz Rietveld was yours again.

word count - 2.3k

a/n : hi wow writing after a long time !! also the summary of this sucks lowkey but we roll <33 please reblog/comment it makes my day <33

leave reqs here !! (no promises tho)

The little palace never felt like home. Something about being considered superior and the ongoing talks about how being a grisha was a gift by the saints, one meant to be cherished made you irritated. Being a grisha was what took your real life away, took you away from a person you cared for the most, Kaz brekker.

Kaz brekker was known by many names be it the bastard of the barrel or dirtyhands but you never knew him as those, to you he simply was Kaz Rietveld, to you he would always be the boy who was caring and smart and broken. Life hadn't been kind to him and it probably still wasn't.

When you both were fourteen and were roaming around the streets of Ketterdam without a care in the world on your part, some grisha came and took both of you to be tested, Kaz wasn't one but you turned out to be, and then without a choice you were taken away from him to the little palace. You wished you had put up more of a fight, maybe even tried using whatever powers you had to free yourself, maybe then you'd still be in Ketterdam with the one you wanted.

But deep down you knew however hard you would've tried you wouldn't have been to run away. You missed everything about your old life even if it wasn't the most safe and comfortable, even if you weren't guaranteed a meal everyday, even if it meant living on the edge everyday cause it meant you could be with him.

You were now seventeen and you felt like you knew nothing except the fact that you missed him. And now you were amidst a war for a country you weren't sure you cared for but you still helped of course, you battled for Genya to receive her justice, you battled for the people who lost their lives due to General Kirigan being an abomination to the society and using people as pawns in his own twisted game.

"Zoya let me come with you to Shu Han." You spoke with eagerness in your voice.

Ever since knowing about the plan to hire the crows to retrieve the Neshyenyer from Shu Han you've been on your toes. This could be the one chance to see him before you possibly died. You weren't going to give up on that.

"Tolya is coming with me I've already told you this once before." Zoya said, Her voice was dripping with sternness, she didn't want any further arguments, "besides why do you even want to come with me?"

You glared at the woman in front of you, it felt as if the fire that normally blazed through your fingers was now in your eyes, "you know why." You said, your voice cold, your jaw clenched.

Zoya studied you, she saw the way your hands were in a tight fist and how your lips were in a thin line. She noticed the slight hitch in your breath and the way your eyebrows were scrunched, then she met your eyes. Your eyes were filled with a fire she had only seen once before when you had found out General Kirigan's reality.

"Fine. You can come with me," She said tilting her head slightly, "don't make me regret this." A smirk rested on Zoya's face.

"I won't. Thank you." You said and gave her a nod, going away to get ready for your travels to Ketterdam and then Shu Han.

Ketterdam. You had so many feelings about Ketterdam that it overwhelmed you. Was Ketterdam your home? Maybe it was cause he was there. Or was it your enemy, the place which broke and bruised you, which made you feel as if someone took a dagger and slowly ran it through your body, just enough to sting forever. Was it a place that placed an irreplaceable hurt in you or was it a place you longed to be in cause he was there. Sometimes you found yourself missing Ketterdam, or maybe you just missed Kaz. After all, it's always the people who make a place feel like home, a safe haven.

-

The whole ride to Ketterdam to you was completely utterly anxious. Your fingernails dug deep into your fist, your bottom lip so chewed out that you could now taste blood in your mouth. You had to remind yourself to breathe and your heart to beat. One of your hands reached the necklace that laid against your chest, your fingers softly gripping its pendant— a heart, engraved with flowers around the corners and a capital R in the middle. You had remembered the day Kaz had given it to you, it was your fourteenth birthday. He had nicked it from a pawn shop and hoped you'd like it. You remembered it as clear as day how he gave it to you, it was a memory that brought you peace, taught your heart how to beat again. You closed your eyes, releasing the tight grip of your fist and freeing your lips from your teeth. Taking a deep breath you lost yourself in the memory.

"hey," Kaz called out to you, your name leaving his lips, "come in"

You followed Kaz into his room and sat on the chair of his study, he opened his cupboard and removed a small circular velvet box. Your eyes curiously followed the box and him as he sat on the bed opposite to your chair, his hand still holding the box. You looked at him and slightly raised your eyebrows.

"happy birthday" he said, holding out the box for you to take. His voice seemed almost emotionless, like always, but this time you could hear the slightest quiver in it. Was Kaz Brekker nervous?

Your face adorned a smile, "is this for me?" You asked him, your voice slightly teasing.

"yes." He spoke, motioning you to take the box.

You took the box from him gingerly, a small thank you leaving your lips as you gave him a big smile, your finger ran along the edges of the box feeling the soft velvet and then you opened it. A soft gasp of surprise leaving your mouth as you removed the necklace out of the box, "Kaz! This is so precious" you said, an even wider smile now covered your face, the one where he could see your teeth, "thank you so much." You spoke earnestly.

"I'm glad you like it." Kaz spoke, the tiniest of smiles on his face.

You studied the pendant, your finger dragging along the pink flowers carved along the heart's edges, you smiled at the 'R' in the middle of the heart, "There's a 'R' in the centre of the heart" you said, your eyes meeting his, your eyebrows raised slightly as if questioning him.

Kaz remained silent, you felt as if you said something wrong, maybe you shouldn't have pointed it out, maybe it was accidental. But then Kaz said, "This way, there's always a piece of the real me with you." of course it wasn't accidental, kaz brekker is a mastermind, everything he does will always have a meaning.

"Thank you," you said, putting the necklace on, "I love it"

He merely gave you a nod and you left his room.

-

"Let me do the talking." Zoya said, her eyes on your face as you stepped into the crow club, you hummed a noise of approval your eyes desperately searching the dim lit room which reeked of alcohol, a smoky haze covered the room. Someone approached Zoya, you didn't know who he was nor you cared cause it wasn't him.

You soon got lost in your thoughts again, kaz often had that effect on you. You couldn't stop thinking about how he would react to seeing you, would he even acknowledge you? Would he show the slightest reaction? You weren't sure. Soon, Zoya grabbed your arm and tugged on it, "Let's go? I've been calling your name." Her voice had its usual sternness.

"Yeah, right, sorry." You spoke softly, your face held a look of melancholy, Zoya noticed it and her eyes softened, she placed her hands on yours gingerly and gave it a gentle squeeze, "it'll be okay" she said softly, offering you a small smile. You gave her a warm smile and a nod as you both walked towards a hall led by someone.

"Boss will meet you here", the man said as he opened the door to a room which looked like a study, you walked in and Zoya took a seat on the wooden chair kept opposite the table. You walked along the room, your eyes taking in every single corner of the room. You saw the painting hung up on the wall, scrolls of paper neatly placed on the side table, a black wool coat hung on the coat rack. Your breath hitched slightly, "was it his?," You thought, your hand reaching out to touch it, your hand grazed along the soft wool and then you heard the door open. You turned around and your eyes widened a little, your mouth slightly open, a breath left your mouth and your eyes met his striking blue ones. You felt as if time had stopped, you could feel your heart beating fast, so fast that you could feel it in your throat. "Kaz" you said, your voice barely a whisper.

Kaz's eyes widened a little, you could see his grip tighten on his cane, you gave him a little smile, he had to remember you. How could he not?

Zoya's sharp voice suddenly cut the thick tension that settled in the air, "Kaz Brekker, Ravka seeks your help." Her hand holding a letter out to him. A scowl covered Kaz's face, he snatched the letter off Zoya's hand, "We aren't patriots," he said grimly, his eyes meeting Zoya's.

"The money isn't the matter, the king will give you your price" She said with certainty.

Kaz hummed in response, his eyes reading the letter and then it met yours again. Oh those eyes, how you had longed to see them, Kaz's brown eyes were something you'd never forget. You couldn't even if you had tried. His eyes were the shade of brown you saw everyday in your morning coffee, you saw his eyes in the dark leather bound books, you saw his eyes in pieces of dark chocolate. For you he was everywhere- he was in the game of cards you saw younger Grisha playing, he was in the snarky remarks passed around, but more importantly, he was always in your heart.

"Leave." he said now looking at Zoya, "we will discuss about this in a moment." His voice sounded bitter.

Zoya hesitated, her eyes followed yours and she gave you a nod, "Fine, but just a moment", she uttered, leaving and slamming the door shut.

"Kaz," You called out, this time louder. Your voice held desperation in it, it was soft yet tense- you wanted to hold him, you wanted to touch him and try to make up the lost time, you took a step closer to him, "i missed you" you said, your hand fiddling with your necklace.

Kaz's eyes followed your hand, he was surprised to find out you still had the necklace with you, "Three years." he spoke, his voice softer now, "it's been three fucking years." you could see his walls slowly breaking down, his eyes becoming softer, the grip on his cane becoming weaker. "I wondered if you had died", his voice quivered slightly, his eyes glossier.

Another step forward, "How could i die without seeing you?", you said, humor in your voice, "Kaz, are you okay? is everything okay?" you asked, your face held a look of melancholy, your lips pursed.

"You look different," Kaz said, ignoring your question, "you look beautiful." he said slowly, a small smile playing on his lips.

you could feel the tears in your eyes, you smiled at him, a soft giggle left your lips, "Thank you, but that still doesn't answer my question, are you okay?"

"I missed your laugh" he said, "i missed you." This time Kaz took a step towards you, his gloved hands tensed a little. "You still have the necklace." he remarked.

You nodded, "how could i not carry a piece of the real you with me always?"

Kaz looked down, his hand tracing patterns on his cane, "I hated being away from you" he admitted, "i-" he took a breath, his eyes meeting yours, the look on his face made you want to cry, you could feel your eyes filling up with tears again, "I needed you" he said, your name leaving his lips, another breath in, "I wanted you".

You tilted your head slightly, your hands wiping the few tears on your cheek, "I am sorry,"

"It wasn't your fault." he said quickly.

"You have me now, if you still want me." you said, your voice slow, "after this, this war is over I'll stay here in Ketterdam, if you want me too"

Kaz's face looked like that of a young boy again, he was changed in the way he was now, he was dirtyhands, the bastard of the barrel, he was someone people feared- but right now, in this moment, he was Kaz Rietveld again.

"I will always want you." He said slowly, his hand reached out for yours, it tensed a little.

"Kaz you don't have too-"

"I want you to stay." He said, his hand relaxing in yours, "i want you." He gently squeezed your hand.

"Then you'll have me" you said smiling, "you will have me Kaz Rietveld."

[ofswordsandpens]

Finale Thoughts

The show stuck the ending far better than I thought it would and when compared to the preceding episodes it knocks it out of the park. That being said, I think because the bar was so low going in, that it makes this episode feel spectacular when really every episode should have done this well, at minimum.

Solo Lessons and Ares Battle

I'm so happy they included the one-on-one training sessions with Luke since its so essential to foreshadowing. I also liked the setting in the woods but why was it like autumn/fall in the flashback lol? However, I think that did unintentionally add a dreamlike quality to the scene which I did really like so whatever I'm here for it.

That being said I do wish these scenes were in episode 2/3 alongside the other chb stuff instead of being a flashback in the finale because it makes it just so on the nose that Luke's the traitor. However, the shot panning from Luke's extended sword to Percy's on the beach ate I can't lie.

Honestly it may have been interesting if they had established some of the solo lessons early on in episode 3 and then done periodic flashbacks to expand on them throughout the series. That way, its not so obvious that Luke's the traitor in the final hour and we also get cool transition shots and establishing that Percy is thinking about what he's learned from his lessons with Luke.

#Relieved that the Ares and Percy fight was not a single sword strike and then cut to black. Glad we had some action. Still think we should've pushed the limits much harder tho.

Oh but Percy's wave did go hard. They actually made the wave much bigger than what happened in the book and now I'm just sitting here wondering why we couldn't see some more of this instead of 10,000 cut to black scenes every time Percy uses his powers.

I wish we had gotten this Ares's reaction from the book when he lost: "The roar that followed made Hades’s earthquake look like a minor event. The very sea was blasted back from Ares, leaving a wet circle of sand fifty feet wide." Show Ares's reaction seemed so anticlimactic in comparison.

And no curse???? huh??

I know Ares was like "we're enemies 4 life now" but the curse and dialogue from the book goes so unbelievably hard: “You have made an enemy, godling. You have sealed your fate. Every time you raise your blade in battle, every time you hope for success, you will feel my curse. Beware, Perseus Jackson. Beware.”

Why couldn't show Ares say that??

Olympus, Zeus, & Poseidon

[Insert aw, she's ugly John Mulaney Meme]

sorry Olympus could've should've been prettier.

Like Olympus in the book felt a lot more wondrous and lush and colorful. But in the show it seemed so dull. Idk if its cause the "war's happening" or whatever it was just bland. a wash of dull-looking cgi and then an instant cut to the Big Palace.

Lance Reddick's Zeus was amazing tho. He had that godly presence I've been waiting for.

And Toby Stephens's Poseidon? oh I loved it.

I especially loved their conversation in greek.

I still wish however they would have done effects on the gods' eyes. Like glowing with energy or something when they get emotional. I felt like I was waiting to see electricity burst from Zeus when he was yelling at Percy.

And so it turns out that the reason why they changed it to Percy missing the deadline in the show was to create a situation in which Poseidon surrenders a war for his son.

And listen, if this scene existed in a vacuum I'd be so here for it. I guess a part of me can't fathom the solstice being anything other than a hard deadline. I enjoy the scene without context, within context I have mixed feelings about it.

But the "do you dream?" convo between Percy and Poseidon. Oh my god no notes. I loved it.

Some more book dialogue that I wish made it: “You did well, Perseus. Do not misunderstand me. Whatever else you do, know that you are mine. You are a true son of the Sea God.”

Luke's Betrayal

Okay here's where we get some high highs and low lows.

Some things I sincerely liked:

The setting. Fireworks going off in the background. The lantern illuminating the side of Luke's face with the scar. So visually nice.

Luke actively trying to recruit Percy! I've always joked that if Luke was just a little smarter he would have tried to persuade Percy to join his side rather than immediately kill him. And I do like that the show went this direction.

While I do mourn the loss of the scorpion them battling via swords is a great subversion of the sword mentor/mentee dynamic they share. It makes the scene tense and fast pace.

And its all of the above that makes me wonder why we didn't have more of this throughout the show: talking while battling, visually appealing and dynamic settings, unique visuals, etc.

I love how triggered Luke was at Percy's mention of meeting Hermes. I still hate how much Hermes introduction bogged down the show but damn if it didn't lead to one singular funny moment.

Percy getting a hit in on Luke and then immediately apologizing

"I didn't think you'd give the shoes to Grover." Oh that was cold.

Walker and Charlie deserve their flowers and more they were fantastic and carried.

Now things I DIDN'T like:

I don't like how Percy pieced it together with the information he did have... which honestly isn't a lot in the show? If he was going to figure out that Luke was the traitor I would've have had Luke show more of his bitterness like he did in the book. Like the fact the show never even mentioned Luke's failed his quest loses the entire element of Percy succeeding an "impossible" quest and being celebrated while Luke only got a scar and a chip on his shoulder from his failed one.

Luke's scar shoulda been worse idc.

Percy should have been mortally wounded. That's where we run into an issue with there being no scorpion because yeah, a fatal sword injury probably would've been a bit much to depict. I also 10000% think that Luke is enough of a baby to get his daddy issues triggered and then try to off Percy for it even if his original intention was to recruit him.

Also the fact that you see Luke raise his sword for a damning blow and then the very next day you have Percy like "I don't think Luke was trying to kill me." and Chiron agreeing? asdlkfjsdlkf WRONG.

Also, sorry, I don't like that Annabeth was there.

But if you're gonna have Annabeth there, her reaction to Luke betraying her and trying to hurt Percy should've been way more severe than a solemn "I heard everything."

She shoulda been crying, questioning, yelling even if she had suspected him. It's one thing to suspect it, it's another to see the person you consider your family to actually prove it true.

(And this isn't on Leah! It's 100% on the directors cause what was the thought process here? Her brother figure betrays her and she's like :/)

And sure, in the book Annabeth isn't actually all that surprised by Luke's betrayal when Percy tells her about it... but we also never got to see her initial reaction to it. Percy was out for 2 days.

Just, if book Annabeth had been there, she would've been so emotional and that's okay!! let Leah show off her chops!

Sally

I mourn book Sally. I mourn her arc. I mourn the power of Sally unapologetically petrifying Gabe with Medusa's head.

One of the most iconic storylines from the book and it was sanitized in the show to the point that it lost all sense and meaning.

Honestly one of the biggest disappointments of the show for me.

Other

I love the fact that a flower is the searcher's license for satyrs its just so silly and sweet.

I love Annabeth sincerely hugging Percy but also using it for strategizing purposes it feels very on point for her.

Also her braids at the end!! so sweet!

I am very very bitter that Percy didn't see the fates. This + the changes made to Sally's characterization and arc... the show truly doesn't get it.

[precious-little-scoundrel]

Friends in the Crucible

MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU

1: Welcome to Hell Island

Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt

AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.

Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏

Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.

Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!

There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.

So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.

But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.

It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.

Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.

Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?

Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.

Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.

Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.

“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”

Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.

He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.

“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”

“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.

Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—

“All personnel prepare for landing.”

Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.

“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”

To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.

“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.

The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.

“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.

There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.

“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”

“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”

Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.

“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Lemons, sir.”

“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.

“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”

“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.

Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”

The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.

That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.

She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.

Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.

But no.

Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.

Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.

“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.

Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.

Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.

Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.

Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.

“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”

Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.

Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!

Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.

The sergeant looked away to the other side.

Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.

The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.

Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.

The sheet was tugged up all the way.

That triage was over.

Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.

“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-

“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”

“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.

They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.

“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ‘em under the wings!”

There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.

“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.

“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.

Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.

All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.

They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”

He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.

“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.

“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”

“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.

The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.

Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.

“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.

“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.

A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.

Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.

Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.

Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?

For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.

“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.

“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.

“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.

“Sir-“

“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”

“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.

“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”

“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.

“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.

“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.

“Yup, and we leave in ten.”

“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”

The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.

“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.

“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”

“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.

Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.

“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”

Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.

“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.

“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.

“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”

“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”

Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.

“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.

“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.

“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”

“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”

The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.

“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.

Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.

Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“

“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.

There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.

“You hit?”

“No. Read me, Benny-“

“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.

“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.

Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.

“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.

“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.

Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”

“You got it, commander.”

More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.

“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”

Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.

“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.

“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.

A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”

“How bad?”

“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.

Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.

“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.

“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.

“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.

“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.

“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.

“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”

“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.

“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”

Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”

“I know sir.”

“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”

“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.

“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.

By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.

“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.

“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”

The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.

It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.

“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.

She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.

Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.

He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”

“What the hell for?” Egan balked.

“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.

“I repeat -what the hell for?”

“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”

“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”

There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.

“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.

Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:

“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”

The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.

“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.

Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.

It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.

“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.

John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.

“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”

“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear

Leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.

“Leaning, leaning

Safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.

That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”

There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.

“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.

A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.

“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.

“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”

Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.

“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”

“So should you.” she hinted kindly.

“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”

“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.

“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”

“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”

“Kiss ‘em better?”

“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”

“She scares me.” he objected.

“And I don’t?”

“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.

“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.

“Buck!”

“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”

“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.

“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.

“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.

“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.

“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.

“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.

“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”

“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.

“What?”

“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”

Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.

“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”

“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.

“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.

“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.

“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.

“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.

That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“

“Well, mine do.”

“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“

“-you do though.”

“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”

Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“

“-What?”

“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .

“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”

“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”

“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”

“I am.”

“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”

“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”

“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.

“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.

“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”

“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.

“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”

“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.

“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.

Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“

“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”

Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.

When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.

Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.

“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”

Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.

She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.

“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.

“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”

“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.

“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”

He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.

She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.

The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.

As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.

“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“

“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.

“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.

“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”

Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”

“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”

“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.

“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.

“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.

“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.

“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”

“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”

“But it was pretty.”

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.

“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”

“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”

“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.

“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.

“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.

“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.

“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.

Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.

Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.

“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”

“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”

“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”

“Alright.”

“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”

Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.

Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.

“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“

“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”

“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”

“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.

“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.

“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”

“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.

He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”

Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he’d secured the fabric.

“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”

“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.

“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.

“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.

Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo

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[papil0nglegs]

Hiiii can you do some tf2 x drunk/sleepy reader? I need sniper comfort rn. You write so well, I wish I could devour it.

Roses are red, I’m going to bed 🌘

Tf2 x Sleepy!Reader

A/n: this request is pretty yum, also I CANNOT have 3 day weekends. I literally just ruined my sleep schedule on those three days I’m dead 😵

Warnings: Alcoholism

Divider by Cat Kitsune on Tumblr

Spy

Will not hesitate to force you to wake up or go to bed, he can’t a snoozy hoe on his team

If you have messy bed hair he’s always prepared to brush it. He firmly believes that when coming to work you should look your best.

“Ow! Stop you’re gonna pull it out!!”

“Oh enough whining, you’re fine.”

Proceeds to pull a whole knot you had in that bird nest you call hair

Showing up in your pajama pants? Not on his watch. He’s always bringing a spare of your uniform

“Here, put this on”

“Cmon spy I’m really tired, can I just skip this one?”

“No, you said that last time and ended up sleeping in the middle of battle because you ‘felt too comfortable’.”

He’ll slap you awake, don’t doubt him, he will.

He mostly does it whenever he’s giving out one of his little speeches, he can’t stand it when people don’t listen to him

“If we don’t do this mission right, we might as well kill ourselves now.”

snore

“sigh I’ve had enough of this girl/boy.”

You’d be lurking around the kitchen getting your midnight snack, then he just suddenly pops out of nowhere scaring the shit out of you

Will try to offer you an espresso to wake you up or get you sober but you didn’t enjoy it

Sniper

You sleepy fucks.

Ok but he’s always taking care of you, he doesn’t have much going on in his little world so he’s always able to cut some time to bring you to bed

“Cmon mate, let’s go”

“Nooo, just one more shot”

“There are no more shots, you finished the bloody bottle.”

He tried giving you coffee but you puked in his van because this motherfucker served you BLACK coffee

“I’m so sorry Snipez! I’ll make sure to scrub it clean so that it doesn’t smell”

“No worries lad, it’s on me for draggin’ ya into me van”

Oof, and here you were ready to get the daylights knocked out of you for making his van smell like sour liquor

Of course he forgave you mostly because he loves you, but he also relates to you on the sleepy note

If you guys even sit next to each other then one of you guys are gonna sleep on the others shoulder

You better be a heavy sleeper tho, his snores are LOUDD

If you guys sleep in the base soldier wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming how the enemy team is shooting missiles at the base

However it’s a rare occasion since for the most part he lets you sleep with him in his van

even if it can barely fit him

Whenever you pass out with your head laying on a surface, he’d put his hat on your head because he thinks it’s cute

“Heh, sleep well love.”

Medic

Don’t pass out around him, just don’t

Long story short Demoman passed out in his presence once and stole the Scottish guys liver to test the effects his experiments would have on you and demo since you guys drink a lot

He’s so surprised how you have so much energy on the field and immediately pass out as before you can even change out your uniform

“BRING IT ON YOU BLUEBERRY BITCHES”

You’d pass out in the middle of battle

He offered to do some experiments on you to see how he can give you more energy to stay awake but you declined because, duh.

Once you just took your daily hour long nap and the first think you saw when waking up was a pair of brown eyes staring at you

“Ah, you’re awake. Vell my job here is done.”

“Medic please don’t tell me you did some shit to me.”

“Vat? Nonsense!! I just watched you sleep for a bit.”

“..I think I’d rather have you do the first option”