#basilonefic

[basilone]

I wasn't about to let @blind-dates-fest pass me by, and I'm very excited to get to share this next piece! We're off to a racetrack in Wyoming this time, as we sneak a little peek at Gale Cleven's childhood... and get to know someone new!

It’s one of those slow business days. There’s no big race on today, even though it’s the weekend and there ought to be. It seems to Sally as though the whole of Wyoming is holding its breath for a little while. Waiting for next weekend, when the best horses and finest families will come out for a time on the track. That’s when the season really starts and the money begins to flow.

Well, at least, all of this is according to Mister Danvers from the ticketing booth. Sally doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in the opinion of a man who doesn’t know the difference between a cravat and a bow tie, especially not after he’d said Sally wouldn’t have to add any big numbers because hot dogs are cheap. But then Erica Post of the Post Winery had said the same, minus the snippy comment about Sally’s hot dogs, and so had Susan Rugatti, with the additional comment that Sally’s hair needs fixing.

There’s nothing wrong with her hair.

Sally puffs an exhale and swipes her unruly fringe off her forehead as she takes stock of her stand. Lunch rush has come and gone, insofar as one can call it a rush when it’s just fifteen people and three screaming kids, and the time of afternoon snacks isn’t quite reality yet. If she hurries just a little more than she is right now, she could finish that chapter on how to set broken bones and get a head’s start on next week’s studying.

She could do all of that, even though Miss Audrey’s currently gliding over to her stand with all the air of the faux French aristocracy in her countenance. She’s guiding a young boy not older than ten or eleven by the shoulder. Leaning on the kid, actually, as though she’s quite concerned he’s going to bolt sooner rather than later.

“Good afternoon, Miss Audrey!”

“Sally, ma chérie,” booms the woman, heavily-lidded eyes sparkling with good humor, “you are like an angel’s appearance to me!”

Sally can’t help but laugh at such nonsense. Miss Audrey’s always complimentary like that, often making a whole lot of hubbub about something. She works with hats and hair and harlots, darling – Miss Audrey’s words, not Sally’s – and is to the Wyoming racetrack as the President is to the White House.

“You flatter me,” she says, smiling as the woman draws close to her stand. “How’re the girls? And business?”

“One and the same, one and the same,” waves Miss Audrey, rolling her eyes for good measure. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves for putting us up in that tent right there. I told Mister Barbieri that I can’t cut hair like that, and oh Sally what that awful man told me next cannot be repeated in polite company...”

“They’re expecting some gusts of wind to roll in on Wednesday. You’ll be out of your tent by next weekend, then,” winks Sally, knowing everyone on the track would help foil Mister Barbieri’s best-laid plans any day of the week even though he owns the place. One tent won’t be a match for that kind of determination. “You got any clients coming in today, Miss Audrey?”

“Sure do. Next week’s gonna be a big hubbub, but can’t complain about today neither. I told the little mister here that we’re always happy to see him, but he shouldn’t stick around too long this time.”

Sally gives the kid a quick once-over. “Good of you,” she says, taking in the boy’s small shuffle and his apparent refusal to so much as look at her. “He ain’t one of yours, I know that much”– it’s just Miss Audrey’s Lola who’s got a kid, and that one’s as dark as this one’s fair –“so who’s the kid, anyway?”

“I’m not a kid!” says the boy, before Miss Audrey can even open her mouth to answer for him. His rather fierce glare flashes up at her from beneath his tousled blond hair. “My name is Gale”– there’s demand in the emphasis, a don’t you dare call me otherwise lurking in his tone –“and I’m nine!”

Sally only just manages to hide the largest portion of her smile. “Nice to meet ya, Mister Gale,” she says, resting her chin on her hand as she makes a show of studying him. Collar on a too-neat shirt tugged a little askew, trousers that have been patched up at least twice, some scrapes on his knuckles, and a pair of battered-looking shoes. “My name’s Sally,” she offers, “and I’m nineteen.”

The kid – Gale – nods at her with the tiniest incline of his head. He didn’t object to being called mister, which should not feel like a won battle as much as it does right now. It’s kid he’s got problems with, then, and Sally can hardly blame him for that.

“Gale hasn’t yet had lunch. Or breakfast.” Miss Audrey manages to make it sound like an everyday sort of thing to be told at three in the afternoon, even though her mouth does that funny little disapproving thing that Sally’s never quite been able to mimic. “We had no idea about that until Candy heard that belly rumble, lemme tell ya that!”

Hides hunger, thinks Sally, already busying her hands with a warm bun and a knife. Miss Audrey lets him sit with her girls. A quiet kid, then, if even hard-shelled Candy manages to look out for him. She’s seen the like of him before, usually lurking in a group of rowdier kids, eyes roving everywhere but mouth refusing to show weakness.

“What d’ya want on your hot dogs, Gale?” she asks, making a show of adding one very hot sausage to the bun. “I’m getting two for you and one for me. Mine’s gonna have a whole lot of mustard and some red onions. And you look like the kinda man who knows exactly what to put on his.”

She’s not sure if it’s her wink or the promise of food that’s got him stepping out of Miss Audrey’s shadow. “D’you have ketchup, Miss Sally?” he wonders, blue eyes going wide as she nods in reply. “A-And… uh… I want cheese on one of them.”

“So that’s one ketchup dog and one ketchup-and-cheese dog?” she checks, showing him exactly what she’s doing to make his food. “Yeah?” She laughs as his nod turns rather vigorous. “All right, Mister Gale, I’m gonna add the ketchup now and I’m gonna need you to tell me stop, okay?”

“Okay!”

“I’ll leave you both to it, Sal,” says Miss Audrey, patting a few crisp dollars into Sally’s apron’s pocket that Sally already knows better than to protest against. Her multi-ringed hand ruffles Gale’s hair as his first stop! rings out. “Enjoy your late lunch, and be good to Miss Sally.”

“Yes ma’am,” nods Gale, fingers already carefully rearranging his hair and smoothing its back while he leans over to see the ketchup progress on the second hot dog. “Stop! More cheese than ketchup, please,” he directs, sounding very sure of himself indeed. “They’re better with cheese.”

“D’you want cheese on both? You can, you know, it’s no trouble. Look,” she says, slightly overdoing it on the mustard for hers, “you can get as much as you want on these. Not a lot o’ people have been wanting cheese today, so you’re extra lucky!”

“Only if it’s no trouble…”

“None,” she smiles, putting more cheese than ketchup on both of his. “Now, c’mere, grab yourself a plate,” she directs, “and – oh, thank you!” She blinks in surprise as he holds another plate out to her. “That’s gonna make these onions a little easier to eat. They would’ve spilled all over my apron like yesterday otherwise!”

His you’re welcome, miss is rather soft-voiced. Almost shy, really, in comparison to some of the more loudly demanding nine-year-olds she’s seen out and about at the track. He’s got that look about him of someone who’s going to grow tall – all limbs and careful posture – even though he just sat down and made himself small as can be.

Sally brushes her apron and skirt down. Settles on the grass just outside her hot dog stand, next to her small pile of books and notes. Folds herself around her plate the same way Gale does – arm around it to shield it from view, hunched over the food just to be sure nobody takes it – and tucks into her own food with no small degree of relish.

“Oh, that’s the ticket,” she sighs, having only had a single coffee and an orange early this morning before she was almost late for her bus. She smiles as she peers up at the kid, who’s practically wolfing his food down. “You like ’em, Gale?”

His nod is accompanied by him licking his fingers clean and wiping them on his trousers. Sally finds she’s learning fast the longer she studies him. He’s somebody’s kid all right, because his clothes got patched up and he’s got manners some of the orphan kids don’t. Nobody objects to him spending time with Miss Audrey’s girls, even though Miss Audrey’s girls are scantily clad loudmouths who rake in more cash in two hours than Sally does in a week’s work.

“Does your daddy know how to find you?” she asks, deducing several things just from watching him polish his plate clean. “Is he expectin’ you at Miss Audrey’s?”

There it is. The small freeze. That little line to his shoulders that goes rigid and defensive all at once. “I know where to find him,” says Gale, biting the words out like the very syllables have their hackles raised at her. “It’s not time yet.”

“All right,” she agrees, setting her plate aside and leaning back a little. “You tell me when it’s time now. There’s a big clock out on th–”

“The pavilion.” His hands are a flurry of motion, dragging a chewed-on pencil and rather battered little notepad out of his shirt pocket. He doesn’t look at her. Flips the notepad open and sets his pencil to paper instead. “I been here before, you know.”

Sally almost winces at his tone. “All right, Buckaroo,” she sighs, propping her own book up on her knees, perfectly aware that she’s conceding defeat to a rather headstrong nine-year-old. She smiles as she catches his tiny grimace at the nickname. Gotcha, kid. “I’m here almost every day in summer. So are the hot dogs.”

She’s not surprised when he stays silent. Kids like him often do when something starts to sound too much like an invitation or expectation. It’s what she would’ve done, too, back in the time her mother was dreaming about winning big money instead of buying something to put on the dinner table.

Nine-year-old Sally would’ve killed for a hot dog.

“And your homework.”

Sally blinks away her furious stare at the differences between fibula and tibia. “Sorry,” she says, attempting to smile, “what was that?”

Gale’s half-moon smile flickers up at her. “Your homework, Miss. That’s here too.”

“So’s yours, by the look of that,” she nods, indicating his notes.

“It’s just some stuff.”

“Some stuff, huh? Me, I’m learning about bones.” Sally raises her book to show him, seeing how his arm has already come up to curl around his notepad to shield it from view. “See? I need to learn how to help fix them when they’re broken. So I need to learn what they look like when they’re normal, first.”

Gale peers at the pages more closely than she’d have imagined him to do. “That’s Latin.”

“A little! The bone names are like that,” she agrees, nodding, “and I think it makes them sound as important as they are. D’you know Latin?”

He shrugs. “Only if it’s got to do with calculating things. Like ad infinitum means that the operation is to be carried out endlessly.” His nose wrinkles a little at his explanation. “Infinity’s still really tricky, though, so I’m trying to work on limits rather than infinitesmals right now. I think infinity’s one of those things I’ll know once I’m as old as you.”

“Yeah?” Sally grins at him over the top of her book. “Are you going to be a scientist, then, Buckaroo?”

“No, I’m going to be a pilot! And they have to do loads of math!” He doesn’t grimace at the nickname this time. Scoots closer until he’s seated beside her, even, just so he can show her a sliver of his notepad that’s filled up with numbers and crude little graphs. “I’m practicin’ heaps of it.”

“Getting a good start!”

Gale nods vigorously. “I’m gonna be the bestest pilot ever, Miss Sally.”

“Yes, you are,” she agrees as his knee knocks against hers. “I’m gonna be a good nurse, too. It’s all in the work.”

“You’re gonna be the bestest.”

“Not if I don’t know the difference between a fibula and a tibia,” she snorts, tapping the page. “Just like you won’t be a pilot unless you know fancy things like trajectories and calculus. But we’re gonna learn all of that just fine out here.”

And may the good Lord please stop your daddy from clipping your wings before you got a chance to fly.

[basilone]

I’ll take some of these for Band of Brothers or The Pacific, please!

No real character/pairing preference -- y’all know who I do best, and if you wanna see me write something else then by all means surprise me ;)

Feel free to ask me to write something set in my form & void verse/AU! (One tiny aside: please no John Basilone for this one, for creative purposes.)

You can also request something that includes my OCs Charlie and/or Rachel

things you said prompts;;

send a number and a pairing for a starter or drabble:

things you said at 1 am

things you said through your teeth

things you said too quietly

things you said over the phone

things you didn’t say at all

things you said under the stars and in the grass

things you said while we were driving 

things you said when you were crying

things you said when I was crying

things you said that made me feel like shit

things you said when you were drunk

things you said when you thought I was asleep

things you said at the kitchen table

things you said after you kissed me

things you said with too many miles between us

things you said with no space between us

things you said that I wish you hadn’t

things you said when you were scared

things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

things you said that I wasn’t meant to hear

things you said when we were on top of the world

things you said after it was over

things you said on the streetcar at 1 am

things you said with clenched fists

things you said in the back seat of a cab

things you said sitting still

things you said on the phone at 4 am

things you said but not out loud

things you said in the backyard at night

things you said on the highway

things you said while I cried in your arms

things you said I wouldn’t understand

things you said at the back of the theater

things you said in your sleep

things you said that made me feel real

things you said you’ll never forget

things you said with the tv on mute

things you said while holding my hand

things you said when we first met

things you said when you met my parents

things you said you loved about me

things you said when you asked me to marry you

things you said in our vows

things you said before you kissed me

things you said on new year’s eve

things you said when you kissed me goodnight

things you said in a hotel room

things you said on our honeymoon

things you said when we were 18

things you said when we were 70

things you said as we danced in our socks

things you said with my lips on your neck

things you said in the dark

things you always meant to say but never got the chance

things you said under your breath

things you said in the spur of the moment

things you said when no one else was around 

things you were afraid to say

things you said after we fell in love

things you said [make your own]

[basilone]

Sometimes, war is the province of women. An alternate take on the battle for air dominance over the skies of Europe during World War Two, as told through the stories of an American all-female bomber crew and the people around them. [click here for the complete collection!]

Almost a year ago, I started writing the earth is run by mothers as a collection of one-shot stories. They create one single narrative when put together: the tale of several young women navigating air warfare, relationships, and themselves, to the best of their abilities.

Today, I unexpectedly wrote its final piece after a good conversation with friends. Unexpectedly, yes, because all my best-laid plans sometimes happen to meet a creative block along the way. Resolving this creative block meant facing up to something I already kind of knew in my heart: there is one particular part of this story that I still want to tell, and want to tell in far more detail than this current format allows.

So, while the earth is run by mothers has officially been completed, I think it is safe to say that I am not quite saying goodbye to any of these characters just yet. Thank you all for the love you've given to them over the course of this past year. I appreciate it so much.🧡

And, if this is your first time seeing this series or if you wish to re-read, I of course wish you all the joy in reading it. Please let me know what you think of it when you do!

[basilone]

I was tagged in a last line tag game by the lovely @saturnwisteria, @moghraidhs, and @mercurygray -- thank you guys! 🧡

I'm tagging @shoshiwrites, @floydmtalbert, @aloveforjaneausten, @thoughpoppiesblow, and @blakelysco-pilot in case anyone's got some last lines to share! 😊

And because it's treats day and because everyone's got me thinking Darlene/Lottie thoughts, I'm revisiting an old piece and adding to it...

And it’s not like she hasn’t thought about it any. Sharing a room with Darlene almost demands that she thinks about it plenty. Thinks about it when she’s brushing her teeth while Darlene’s doing her hair. Thinks about it when Darlene’s applying balm to her feet, when Darlene’s giggling over something she read in a magazine, when Darlene’s eating peaches with cream out of a bowl. Thinks about it while she’s getting ready for bed and sees Darlene all sprawled out on the bed beside hers. Thinks about it while she’s in the shower, while she’s out dancing, while she’s... she’s… Oh. Darlene’s mouth is soft. So gentle against her own, sweet about it in a way that aches, unhurried like Darlene always seems to be. She’s just there with her, hand warm against Lottie’s cheek, breath fanning out over Lottie’s lips, lips tasting more like sugar than the candy Lottie’s been eating. Pressing into Lottie’s space more decisively when she doesn’t say no. The rush of her heartbeat pulses in her ears when she kisses Darlene back.

[basilone]

A dose of Darlene to combat the winter blues, a dose of Benny/Darlene because softness is what I got right now, and a dose of Lottie being Lottie because that's how this gets kickstarted at all. I don't think any warnings really apply, beyond some innuendo, but I hope this is something that heals.

to be moved

Lottie loves out loud. Her affection drapes arms over shoulders, rests lips against cheeks and hair and brow, and holds hands no matter the occasion. She flirts without meaning to one minute and flirts with full intent the next, somehow managing to make neither version sound too serious. If you fall for the idea of it being serious anyway – and people often do, hook-like-sinker for that cocky smile and can-do attitude – she’ll let you down as easy as she can, which is to say that she’ll enforce a no with her fist if she has to and adopts a disappointed I thought we was havin’ fun tone if you can’t help but cry about it some.

She doesn’t often apologize. Darlene thinks it’s one of those things Lot just hasn’t been taught, same way she had to be told how to wash her clothes to keep ’em from shrinking. Same way she had to be told how much value really is in a dollar – you can only spend it one time, Lot, goddamn – because she was out here buying presents with cash that would’ve gotten them groceries for three months. That had taken a few solid weeks, looking back, and Darlene doesn’t doubt it’d take even more weeks for Lot to learn how to say sorry proper. Not that kinda glib sorry ’bout the mess she’s perfected – something that flies all right with her fellow pilots – but the kind of sorry that comes outta her toes and tells you she won’t do it again.

That poor ol’ sucker, she almost says out loud, eyeing Lottie’s easy smile at one of the English fellas. They’re on second drink only because Lot palmed her ginger ale off to Major Cleven and managed to make it look like an accident, which is already more than she woulda gotten away with back home. It’s like England’s not really prepared for the eventuality of a Lottie, who descends upon pubs with the air of a tropical storm battering against politely-offered umbrellas. Jesus Christ, Darlene wants to hiss, recognizing that casual flip of hair well enough, he’s already down, will ya stop kickin’ his teeth out?

She shakes her head. It’s one of those nights when she’s not my sweet girl for Lot, tucked away under the woman’s arm and cheek burning with all of Lottie’s kisses. It’s one of those nights she lost Lot’s hand the second the door swung open – it’s for the best, it’s okay, it’s what happens when you’re both girls and can’t sell the we’re just friends very well – and Darlene’s not sorry for it the longer she looks at what’s going on. Lot’s back is pressed against Major Cleven’s side, which Darlene’s sure she’s managed to excuse away as being stuck in a crowded space. Lot’s foot is on the other fella’s chair and her necklace glints up in the light, peeking out from underneath undone shirt buttons. Her smile’s unwavering, as is that little tilt to her head, and Darlene’s seen this work one too many times to not know how the rest of the night’s gonna go.

I don’t like the look o’ him, she’d still say, if she were close enough to Lot’s ear to be heard. He’ll be like that fella we brought home time before last – that one had wanted a picture of them kissing each other, as if that’s the kinda thing to stuff into one’s pocket – and ya know how much of a letdown that was. Darlene supposes maybe it’s different when she lets Lot go alone this time, though this fella don’t look like he knows the first thing about how to make Lot’s legs tremble at all. And Lot ain’t tricky about getting to that stage – though she says she is, but Darlene thinks that’s a special kind of balderdash she just says to make Darlene feel good about getting her there every time – but she’s gonna be catapulting off the walls of her bedroom in the mornin’ if she ain’t gonna get her fill tonight all the same.

Darlene’s just going to clean it all up when that happens. Won’t need to show the English fella to the door, because Lot’ll have gotten rid o’ him just fine after seven minutes of fumbled trying. Won’t need to hold Lot’s hair while she pukes, because she just pawned off her next glass of liquor to a passing Curt Biddick and knocked her water back instead. Will need to tut at Lot about poor choices, sure, and will need to kiss her until Lot sighs and says she’s really done trying this time. Will need to grin and tease and bear it a little longer until Lot forgets her jagged edges long enough to become soft and pliant and needy in a way Darlene understands better than she gets this broken funhouse mirror image Lot keeps trying to pull up. Will need to poke at this wound until it smarts worse than it does now, because she’s just never going to be enough for Lot but there are still moments when she undoubtedly is Lot’s entire universe.

“Hey,” she hears, then, and it sounds like this hey is just meant for her because of how soft-voiced it is, “mind if I sit?”

Darlene makes the mistake of glancing up. Is met with the full force of Bernard DeMarco’s tentative smile directed solely at her. His dark eyes are crinkled up in a way that makes his gaze look even friendlier. It’s warm in this corner of the pub – heat flushes her cheeks now that she feels it unfurl in her chest – and yet he looks unbothered by it enough. It probably helps that he’s not in a bulky flight jacket the way half these fellas still are, but in that leather one she’s always liked the look of far better.

“Uhh,” she says, which isn’t the smartest way to start a conversation. Blinks at him in an effort to gather her thoughts, which seem to have wandered off at the sight of his slightly undone collar. “S-Sure,” she nods, then, patting the empty chair beside her, “yours if ya want it.”

She doesn’t fully know why he wants that. Most of his crew’s keeping entertained near the game o’ darts – ain’t that where she saw him last, too? – and the rest of the folks they know are mostly stuck in that crowd around Major Cleven and Lottie. She’s already said bye to George, who begged off with a headache after first round, and the rest of the girls she came in with are either fanned out across the pub or gone back to base. It’s just her in this corner now, and she’s not really the kind of easy company a pilot like him might want.

“Thanks,” he says, and she flushes a little crimson when he settles down beside her with a sigh that sounds like it came deep outta his belly. “Had to get out of that game before Dickie and Curt took me to the cleaners”– he nods at the darts, where Biddick’s crowing victory –“and Buck’s not great company right now.”

“Major Cleven looks all right ta me?” she questions, glancing over at the man just to be sure. He certainly don’t look different – hand curled around his glass, toothpick between his lips – but she doesn’t really know him all too well. “I trust your judgment, though,” she amends, turning her attention back to the man who’d requested she call him Benny. “If ya say he ain’t, then he ain’t. You fly with him, not me.”

“He’s not all right while Ace keeps flirting with the guy he is most annoyed with,” snorts Benny, and it takes all of five seconds for Darlene to realize he means Lottie and the English fella with that comment. He glances to the side a moment before looking back at her. “I could almost swear she does it on purpose just because Buck doesn’t like him.”

“Yeah, that’s her all right,” agrees Darlene, because it does sound like a Lottie sort of thing to do to her new commanding officer. “And she knows all them English fellas because they been working with our fighter squads more than with y’all,” she elaborates, “so she don’t really think twice about flirting with them any. They know she used to fly them fighters before she went and got herself reassigned, so…” She shrugs. Smiles at Benny. “It’s just some itch that needs scratchin’, for her, and ya can tell the Major that if ya like.”

He makes no move to vacate his seat. If anything, he sinks a little deeper into it – his knee knocking against hers, his jacket brushing her arm – and seems to settle down beside her. He makes a little harrumphing sort of noise in the back of his throat, as though the suggestion of telling Major Cleven that little tidbit about Lot is one he’s wholly discarding for reasons unknown to her.

“Don’t you think this place is a little… weird?”

Darlene blinks at the question, which he managed to make sound earnest somehow. “What d’ya mean, sir?”

“Please,” he says, brow furrowed, barely containing his wince, “I’m just Benny. Not a sir.”

“All right then, just Benny,” she laughs, tucking her leg under her knee and getting comfortable in her own seat, “why do you think this place is weird?”

“Dunno.” He shrugs in a way that tells her he might yet know, but isn’t sure on how to say it. “It’s such a… Back home there’d be more dancing. And singing.” He lights one of his smokes. Offers her one, which she declines with a smile. “There’d be some games, sure,” he admits, “but all these tables… My cousins would make quick work of these, putting them up on the side and the chairs on top of that. Clear some space.”

“Space for dancin’?”

“Yes ma’am,” he grins, already gesturing at which tables they’d clear, already conjuring a hazy vision of it for her mind’s eye. Traces of smoke linger in the air, almost forming dancing shapes of their own where his fingertips were before. “The proper kind, too.”

Darlene can’t help but rest her chin atop her hand at that. “Now what in the world d’ya know about proper kind o’ dancin’, Bernard DeMarco?” she asks, smiling at him like she can definitely keep that secret if he decides to share. “And don’t you ma’am me now, ya hear? I won’t have that when ya got me callin’ ya Benny.”

He raises his hands in clear surrender. “Can’t tell you what I know,” he says, even though he’s leaning forward like he wants to share. “Would need to show you, and this place is not ready for that.” His grin’s as quick as his wink. “It’d be as proper as we make it, Darlene.”

Darlene. He remembers her name without being prompted to. Doesn’t try to make it sound like Arlene or Charlene the way folks do back home when they can’t quite recall the name her mama gave her. He says it the way it ought to be, except somehow he makes her name sound soft and wanting and…

“I ain’t that proper,” she warns him, grinning back now that she’s made a decision. “But there ain’t a reason why ya can’t show me, either. We got outside, don’t we?” She nods at the door. “Ain’t anybody in here that’ll miss us, not with your fellas caught up in their game and Lot caught up in her stupid flirting.”

And it is stupid, now that she really thinks about it some. It’s something so perfectly Lottie, sure enough, because a girl who’s rich enough to make bad decisions with her money sure ain’t gonna fare better making decisions about her life any. She knows all the reasons why Lot goes and plays that kinda game over and over again, but Darlene’s told her time and again that it don’t mean she’s gotta play it with Lot any. It’s certainly not something worth sticking around and ruining her own night for.

“C’mon, Ben,” she coaxes, rising to her feet and offering her hand to him. “Let’s make this place less weird.”

She doesn’t look back once his hand wraps around hers. Does give herself a little shake – that was not a jolt of electricity, no sir – when he holds on to it for longer than she’d thought he would. When his fingers actually tangle with hers, squeezing down just a little, and he guides her to the door as though she’s his actual date for the night. If you was Orpheus, she suddenly thinks, I would be doomed to the underworld because you’d glance at me every time, you’d not walk all that damn way without wanting to see me following you there.

Darlene doesn’t mention that, though the thought makes her draw even closer to him once they pass through the door. She’s always loved the story – of course you’d look back to see your beloved, of course you’d want to – and thinking of that makes her think of how tonight would look to an artist. She’d paint herself in shadows, even her red hair barely catching glints of the light. She’d paint him in warmth – the pub had made him look tanned and full of sunshine – just to translate the feeling she gets from his hand tangled with hers. She’d draw them separate first, then winding together in a flurry not unlike the one she’s battling on the inside now.

He releases her hand just to turn around and bow to her, which is the most ridiculous thing of all.

“Ben–”

“Darling Darlene,” he interrupts, smiling at her like he already knows all the next steps, “will you please do me the honor”– and he makes it sound so sincere, so believable, that she stands and simply gawks at him –“of giving me your hand so I can lead you in our dance?”

He calls me darlin’. Means it, too, because he ain’t the type to say something he don’t mean. “I dunno about honor,” she hedges, fingertips already brushing his knuckles, “but I’d love to dance with ya, beautiful Benny.”

His laugh is instantaneous. Warmer than any paint or pencil of hers could ever hope to catch. “Beautiful, huh?”

“Gotta say it one time,” she admits, “in the hopes that you don’t get too big for that plane o’ yours hearing summat like that.” She grins when he ducks his head. “Seems I just got you shy instead, huh,” she teases, though his hand fastens around hers and his arm wraps around her waist in a clear negation of such a statement. “I did ask George who that handsome fella with the dog was when y’all landed, ya know”– and she’s done pretending she never did, done holding back on that –“so it ain’t like I changed my mind between now and then.”

“God, you just…” He laughs again, warm and full and buzzy against her ear. There’s a gentle sway to his steps that she follows without thinking, leading her further away from the pub’s door. “You’re making things hard, Darlene, you know that?”

“I’ve been told I do,” she grins, unapologetic, and lets out a giggle when he casts his eyes to heaven. “Come on now, ya knew I was gon’ say that. There’s a reason why folks at home call me tacky and shameless.”

His hand tightens around her waist. “Folks at home are wrong about you.” He says it with such quiet conviction that it almost makes her grow too still, too incapable of following his next motions. “And jokes that are also true aside,” he murmurs, “what I meant was that you’re making it hard for me not to fall in love with you.”

“You…”

“Sorry,” he says, guiding her into a spin that takes her out of his arms. “I wasn’t gonna say that part.”

“But ya did,” she says, ignoring his outstretched hand and making up a few swaying steps of her own. If she thinks about anything other than the next move, she knows there’s not gonna be anything left to hold back. “So now we’re dancin’ with that, too.”

“We don’t have to, it’s just some… something I feel. It doesn’t have to…” His hands find her waist. A small curl’s escaped his perfectly coiffed hair. “It doesn’t have to matter.”

She reaches up for that curl before she can stop herself. Brushes it back, then rests her hand against his cheek. She doesn’t think anyone’s claimed to be in love with her before. Lot’s come closest – love ya, Dar – but even that didn’t quite feel like… Didn’t feel like Benny. Didn’t feel as earnest, as honest, as open.

It does matter.

So she kisses him. Winds her arms around his neck and pulls him so close that they simply fit without trying. Meets his mouth with hers because that’s what she’s been wanting to figure out for the better part of a few weeks now. Lets him muffle a sound of surprise in her kiss, lets him press back and squeeze her to him so tight, lets his hand tangle in her curls that have already escaped their past confinement. They’re still swaying to music unheard – to Orpheus’ lyre, or their own hearts – and he makes no effort to spin her out of his arms again.

He winds her closer to him, kissing back, kissing her like she thinks people kiss in those love stories that were never hers. Kissing her with so much care that she definitely falters in their dance. He catches her missed steps with a smile against her lips, a stray touch of lips against her cheek, a murmured I got you that feels safer to her than any plane’s landing.

Darlene doesn’t love out loud. Doesn’t think she knows how, not yet, not in this way she’s feeling right now, in that way that’s entirely too big for her. Thinks she’ll learn, sometime, when she follows his steps right, and memorizes him as he is now. Silhouetted against the horizon, with a smile just for her, holding her like she is something dear.

She thinks she’ll paint him in warmest colors, like the setting sun.

[basilone]

Reorganizing my harddrive brought this little gem up today, and as we're in the season of sharing... Gale/Lottie post-war, anybody? I'm adding a warning for explicit sexual content, but it's just a little snack and not a whole meal in that respect. 😉

She doesn’t need to look.

There is the jingle of his keys, abruptly dying down as they scrape against the small porcelain dish they both hate but keep on hand for keys anyway. There is the immediate scuff and drop of his boots, laces seemingly already loosened, kicked off before he even crosses the bedroom’s threshold. There goes his watch and there goes her ring that he keeps on a necklace when he goes away without her. She hears the snap of the lid to her new jewelry box, which he got for her this past Christmas just because he got tired of seeing her stuff scattered everywhere on her small vanity table.

It’s been a good flight, because he pauses near her chair long enough to remove his jacket. The rustle of his jacket meeting the back of her chair before his cufflinks drop atop his pile of books is familiar. The tread of his footsteps is light – an easy flight, then, if he still carries so much spring in his step – and she bites back a smile when his shirt meets her bare feet. He folds it neatly, fingertips ghosting at her ankles, warmth of his hands tickling the soles of her feet. Undoubtedly he sets it aside atop the dresser for laundry day, next to her own small pile of shirts that has accumulated in his absence.

The bed dips. He fits in the hollow of her body, seated between her arms and legs. Her nose crinkles as his scent permeates her space soon after.

“Jesus Christ, Gilly,” she laments, still not bothering to open her eyes, “you smell like a damn bonfire. Like them fireworks from last month, too.”

“Drove past a fire, stopped to help because one of their dogs had escaped. Told them I had practice catching one.”

“Meatball’s been good for somethin’, huh.” She cracks one eye open. Stretches until she can fold her fingers around the crease of his pants, just above his knee. “Everybody make it out all right? Fire not too bad?”

“They’ll lose an outbuilding, but they managed to put it out before it spread,” he sighs, rubbing at his eyes before raking his hair back. “They’re all fine. Kids were crying, but I still had those lollipops in the car and that seemed to do enough to calm ’em some.”

Lottie can’t help but smile as she opens her eyes to look at him properly. “Regular ole saint, you.” She pokes at his knee until he hisses through his teeth and covers her fingers with his hand. “Bet them kids thought you were a lollipop angel or somethin’ like that. Saving the dog, givin’ out treats… I’m glad everybody made it”– she adds, more sober than teasing now –“damn bad business to have a fire going in this heat.”

“Mmm. Depends.”

“On?”

Her belly flutters as his hand lands warm on her side. She still tries to frown at him. Knows she has failed when his mouth quirks into a soft smile and the squeeze of his hand becomes more pronounced. He turns toward her, then, scooting back onto the bed until his back presses against her thighs.

“On the type of fire,” he says, then, still smiling, eyes alight with a mischief she knows all too well. “You seem to have had a heat crisis of your own while I was out.”

She preens a little. Stretches out languidly, eyeing the ripple of muscle in his arm as his hand comes to rest on her hip. “Had a cold bath earlier,” she says, “kept my hair out of that hassle”– it takes too long to dry now, having grown well past her shoulders again –“but then just… didn’t wanna get dressed no more.”

“Lazy,” he tuts, voice softening. “You feelin’ all right, Lot?”

“Yeah. Just a little drowsy, ’s all.” She illustrates it with a slow blink as his hand slips under her to meet the small of her back. Smiles at the small frown that creases his brow. “Whatcha doin’, baby?”

“Thinking.”

“Mmm, Gilly,” she warns, arching into his touch, smiling bigger still, “don’t think too long on whatever it is. Doing is better.”

He bows until his lips brush her upper arm, streaking a kiss just past her elbow. “Is it?”

“If you’re gonna do what I think you’re gonna,” she allows, squirming a little as his lips travel to meet her shoulder. “Nobody ever got off on thinking before, ya know?”

“I don’t know, Lot,” he says, voice slightly muffled as he readjusts his position on the bed. “Sure got hard enough the other day when I thought of you. Cock twitching just thinking about how sweet you taste, how you sound right before you tell me you need me.” A laugh sparks in his eyes before he actually huffs his amusement out in the small space between them. “Thought about you on my lap so much it made my cock leak before I even got my hand around it.”

“Ah, but ya did wrap your hand around it,” she says, rather pointedly, squirming a little more as his lips meet the hollow of her throat before his touch vanishes again. “Couldn’t wait until you got home, huh? Bet you were doin’ that the same night I slipped my fingers inside of me”– she’s almost sure of it, because it’s always the same day the other’s absence grows almost too much to bear –“even though they ain’t a match for your cock at all.”

“How’d you do it this time, hm?” he asks, squeezing her hip none too gently. “Because when I thought of you, Lot, I thought of you down flat on your belly”– his voice lands against her ear now, all warm purr and honey-coated tease –“working your hand between your body and the sheets, palm pressed against that little nub I love sucking on when I’ve got my mouth on you.” She shivers as his warm breath meets her skin before he presses a soft kiss just below her ear. “Thought of you raising your hips for me, showing me how deep your fingers have slipped while you were waiting for my cock. Thought of pressing you down by winding my hand into your hair and telling you to put your hand away.”

“Would only do that if you promised I could get your cock,” she murmurs, pressing a soft kiss of her own against his days-old stubble. “Would be whining for it something fierce. And yeah,” she admits, flushing ever so slightly, “I had to fix them sheets on this bed after I was through the other night, had myself dripping down my thighs a little too much once I’d fucked myself with my fingers and thought I could rub myself again after.” She grins, unapologetic, as his soft groan greets her ears. “Just like you thought I did, Gilly. Bet you’re sorry you missed that, huh?”

“Missed it?” His hand moves further under her, coaxing her to roll back onto her side. “I didn’t miss a damn thing, sweetheart.” His other hand is in her hair now, while his lips still move against her ear. “Fuck, Lottie,” he groans out as her hand slips against his waistband, “you’re acting like I’m not going to make you come over and over again today.”

“Oh really? You gonna make me come, huh? Gonna ruin our sheets a second time this week?”

“Until you beg me to stop,” he promises, “and then I’ll need your mouth on me until you can take me again. Think you can do that, Lot? Be that good to me?”

She nods, breathless, as he rolls her over on her belly and immediately moves to straddle her bare thighs. “Yeah, I’m gonna be good to ya,” she promises, already arching her back, seeking friction against him. “You gonna keep talking that dirty to me tonight?” Heat suffuses her belly at the thought, knowing what it’s often accompanied by. “You gonna make me beg for it until I cry, ain’t ya?”

“I like how you sound when I put you on that edge,” he agrees easily. His undershirt meets the floor as he presses flush against her ass, making his own want perfectly clear to her. “Had you screaming through your teeth last time, didn’t I?”

Lottie groans out loud as his hand squeezes her hip. “Fuck, Gilly, gonna scream the fucking house down if ya give it to me that good again.”

His voice is a rasp against her ear as he bodily presses against her. “Touch yourself while I get undressed, Lot, and don’t you dare make yourself come with that.”

“What’re you gonna do if I…”

“Pin you down and not let you come a second time tonight until you promise to be good,” he replies evenly, as though he’s talking about the weather rather than about her. “I know how you sound when you’re close. And I know you can come just from being fucked at the right angle, so I’ll change that just enough too.”

“Gilly…”

“Mm?”

“You’re fucking evil,” she snickers, allowing her hand to travel down to her innermost thighs. She turns her head on the mattress enough for him to see how broad her grin has become. “I fucking love you so damn much.”

The press of his kiss against her head is sudden, fierce, wild. He punctuates it with a small swat to her ass that leaves her gasping. “Love you too, Squeak,” he says, rising from the bed. “Missed you.”

“Missed you more,” she smiles, eyes alight as her husband begins to strip out of his remaining uniform. “You gotta come back to bed, handsome,” she teases, slipping a single finger between her wet folds without bothering to bite her moan back. “Don’t leave your poor wife alone like that, it ain’t fair…”

His laugh is soft. “Only you could pout about being left alone for a minute tops.”

“And ya love me for it.”

“That I do,” he murmurs, hand patting her cheek. “Always.”

[basilone]

ASK ME IF I'M FINE. (Spoiler alert: the author was not, in fact, fine.) Gale/Lottie, post-war, getting a little freaky in their bed. Warnings apply for early stages of bondage and Lottie being a bratty but submissive little shit. Nothing too explicit just yet, but uhmmmm...

the only way to fly

All she can hear is the wind and the rain. It makes her feel weightless for a moment, imagining a flight in this weather. The pitter-patter of the rain against the shutters becomes the steady drum against the windshield. The gusts of wind that make the house creak and settle around her sound like the opening of the bomb bay doors before a jump, whistling and swinging through the air like they’re about to land a punch. She feels caught up in it – the little rush before the drop, the feeling of control slipping through her fingertips – and her breath snags on her next inhale before she can stop it.

He taps her chin. Holds it between thumb and index finger a moment, until her breath pulses out of her in gentler puffs than before. She moves her head just a fraction, just enough to nod and signal she’s okay. The gesture makes his hand slip to her cheek. Makes his knuckles brush her cheekbone. He never bruises her unless she asks – unless she fights about it, tells him she needs it – and today his touch is lighter than a feather.

Today, he almost makes her eyes flutter shut.

“Hey, Lottie. Sweetheart.” His voice is hushed, mingling with the next dash of rain. “Eyes on me,” he says, as though she’s at risk of falling. Says it in such a way that she blinks and tilts her head just to watch him. “There you go.”

His gaze is softer than usual. He rubs her cheek a moment, hand slowly falling away into her hair. He’s not dressed for rain – no jacket, nothing to cover his bare arms – and she can’t hear his footfall on the wooden floor when he steps away from their bed. His tan is fading, but not enough for him to stop looking golden in the lamplight just yet. She watches him pick up another piece of rope from her vanity – red this time, like the small cherries printed on her skirt – and wind it around his hand. Watches him pull it taut at his wrist, as if he’s making sure how it’ll feel.

“Stop fussin’, Gilly,” she snickers, watching him loop the rope tighter the second time. “It ain’t gonna hurt.” She’ll hide the small rope burns by buttoning her sleeves over her wrists. Counts herself lucky, not for the first time, that they aren’t regulars at church. “It’s just gonna feel real good…”

“Real good, hm?”

She nods as he pads back over to their bed. Lifts her hand as he settles back onto their mattress with his weight making it dip at her side ever so slightly. Flushes a little, heat settling in her chest as well as her face, when he offers her a small, half-moon smile before his fingertips brush against hers. She can’t help but pull against the rope on her other wrist as he makes the new loop of rope different from the one that already ties her right arm to their headboard. Can’t help but fidget at the knot that slips past her wedding band and lands at her knuckles.

“Gilly…”

“Sshh,” he hushes, thumb brushing her lower lip in an instant. Her tongue darts out to meet it. “Stop it, Ace”– there’s that snap, quick as anything, and the pinch at her lip that’s going to color it redder than lipstick allows –“behave.”

“Sorry,” she whispers, in a vain attempt to sound contrite for a moment. “Just wanna suck on something”– she continues, grinning up at him –“while I wait.”

He hums at that. Wraps the rope a little tighter, knotting it in such a manner that her wrist will not take the heaviest ache of being tied up this way. His thumb pats the corner of her mouth too quickly for her tongue to capture, though she tries to turn her head anyway. Her attempt to lick a little strip of his wrist, right where he keeps his watch, proves in vain.

“You’re soliciting,” he grunts, settling her arm against her pillow, “for a gag.” His grip on her chin is sudden, forcing her gaze to land at the headboard just to see him loop a knot around it. “Way you behave, Lot…” He lets it hang between them a moment. Slips his fingers into her mouth the next, so casually that she almost gasps around them. “Always so goddamn needy, aren’t you.”

She can hear the smile in his voice. Can hear the question that’s not a question, because of course she’s needy in a way that makes him curse. Can hear his approval, now that her tongue wraps around his index and middle fingers, now that her head tilts just so and his fingers slip a little deeper down toward her throat. He’s close enough for her to hear the way his breath catches in the sudden silence between the wind and rain. She slides her mouth over his fingers with a hum, letting them come to rest back on her lips only once they are dripping with her spit.

“Needy,” she affirms, pressing a fleeting kiss to his fingertips as she turns her head to look at him, “for you.”

He lifts his fingers to his own mouth. Locks eyes with her – startling blue under that unruly-looking hair – and licks her spit off himself, tongue peeking out of his mouth as he does. It’s enough to make a noise stutter out of her, something keening and wanting that should be embarrassing except for the fact that it occurs too regularly to still make her feel any shame.

She swears she spots a small twinkle in his gaze as he nods at the headboard. “Try that.”

“It’s still loose,” she breathes, testing her new rope on his say-so. “Can still move…”

“Can you slip out?”

She frowns, trying, feeling it pull taut and near the point of chafing. “Not without pain,” she indicates, trying again and biting her cheek against the sting. “Ain’t like last time.”

“Good.”

“What, you don’t want me slippin’ out of the rope mid-fuck this time?” she teases, snickering, remembering how easy it’d been to escape before. “Don’t want my hand on you, Gilly? I see how it is”– she’s all smiles about it still –“you don’t want me grabbing your hair again.”

“If you’re good,” he says, leaning over her to check her wrists, “I might let you outta these mid-fuck. Grab my hair while you do that, Lot,” he warns, then, voice suddenly dipping into ice, “and I’ll turn you over on your belly and make you feel very sorry you even attempted it.”

She shivers, heat pooling between her thighs, warmth rising to her cheeks. “Threatening me with a good time, huh?”

“You’d hate it,” he assures, breath fanning out warm over the top of her head. “I’d tie you up again. Leave a mark on you. Sit down in your favorite chair right there,” he says, hand at her chin and guiding her gaze to the chair at her vanity, “and watch you squirm about it.”

He’s flooding her senses. He’s all she can smell, aftershave and ink and that hair pomade mingling together. He’s all she can hear, breath and hum and soft little laugh turning her insides upside down. He’s all she can see, soft eyes and warm gaze and that little quirk to his mouth filling her vision. He’s all she can feel, hand on her chin and hand fiddling with the ribbon tie of her dress and press of his body against her hip.

“G-Gale,” she hiccups, needing in a way that doesn’t make her words come fast enough anymore.

“I know,” he murmurs, “I know. You’re all right.”

His eyes don’t leave hers until she nods about it, until she formulates the I’m okay that’s swirling through her veins. She can’t always tie words together when they do this. Knows he’ll see every change in her body and adjust his touch for it, because this isn’t a first time and they have talked about it over several breakfasts. She can let go enough for her pleas to become a rhythm, her whines to become a cadence, her eventual desperation to become a scream through her teeth.

He kisses her brow after her nod. “Love you, Squeaky.”

This is the thing that still gets to her. The one thing that makes her insides go all quiet – her mind screeches to a halt in a way that is potentially mortifying to admit – and makes the world fall away until she can no longer hear the wind, and the rain, and her memories of being on a plane. Love you, he says, like he first did in that forest halfway across the world. Squeaky, he says, too, never giving a nickname to anyone other than her, always putting her on a small pedestal she could never hope to topple from again.

Her smile spreads like wildfire. Lights up her face with a beam of joy she can’t contain. She shifts in her rope bonds until she feels settled, until she can look him in the eye. “Love ya too, Gilly,” she says, then, grinning about it until he smiles back.

Love you more than anything, she thinks as their smiles meet in a kiss. Love you forever.

[basilone]

May I also request ²²⁰⁾ trembling for Lottie and Gale, please? 🌸

Of course, ty for sending it! 🥰 I took a little detour into a college AU for them here, which has them as best friends who're dancing really dangerously close to being more than just best friends. I hope you'll like it!

rabbit heart

"I can't believe you fought him."

"Wasn't much of a fight," he says, shaking his head as he fills a glass. "He went down too quick for that. Didn't hit him that hard, either."

"Gilly, you almost knocked him out!" Lottie's laugh is sudden but genuine as it peals out of her in the next room. "He staggered straight into Julie-Anne's cleavage about it, remember? And that didn't agree with her any, so I guess he's gonna have a right rotten night."

"He's going to get the night he deserves," says Gale, wandering back into his bedroom. "He shouldn't have opened his mouth in the first place."

That earns him a half-hearted shrug from Lottie, or at least an attempt at a shrug that's made more complex than it needs to be due to her position on his bed. Her head's dangling off the edge, with the black ribbon in her hair close to unraveling onto the floor. Her top glitters up at him — all black and silver and gold sequins — but it somehow still isn't as bright as the spark in her eyes.

Gale seats himself on the edge of his bed, about an arm's length away from her. "Got you some water," he offers, holding the glass out as a peace offering. "And don't you start protestin' it will make you, what was it, piss like a rabbit or something."

"A racehorse, goddamn," she snickers out loud, lifting her head and rolling over just to mock-glare at him. "You and your fuckin' rabbits. I knew I shouldn'ta let you watch that sad bunny movie." She scoots closer just to brush his cheek with her knuckles. "It's in your head now, silly Gilly."

He rolls his eyes. "You begged to watch Watership Down with me." He thinks she can do with the reminder, though he won't mention the fact that she got his shirt all wet from sobbing all over it. "Take the water, Squeak. Stop stalling."

"It is gonna make me crawl all over you in the middle of the night. Because you still ain't moved your bed away from the wall. And you don't let me sleep on your side o' the bed." She still takes the glass out of his hands. Takes a dainty little sip of it that he knows better than to react to. "Unless you got plans, in which case…"

"Shut up."

"What? Fella like you, Saturday night, lil bit o' schmoozin'…" Her grin widens with every turn in her speech. "Just sayin'… it's not outside the realm of probability."

"Yeah?" He tsks to himself as she drains the glass in one big gulp. "You're my plans, Lot. Gotta have somebody…"

"I ain't drunk," she says, but the breath that lingers in the air between them reeks of cheap shots and tequila. "Probably ain't even gonna puke. I'm peachy. I didn't even sing this time so I can't be drunk-drunk."

"Not every night is a Livin' On A Prayer sort of night, huh," he smiles, taking the glass from her and setting it out of potential harm's way. "Just don't want you being by yourself after all that, all right?"

"I'm fine."

Gale snorts. "And I'm the Easter Bunny."

"Jesus, Gilly, enough with the dang rabbits already… I swear you're just fucking with me every time you bring 'em up." Lottie's groan is a little too loud to be genuine. Her smile, however, flickers and almost falters entirely. "I said I'm fine, you don't gotta let me stay all night…"

"Your ex made out with Benny right in front of you," he starts, "and you almost blacked Cressie's eye when she breathed in your direction"— he can't say he fully abhors that course of action —"and then you made Maxine cry, which got Brady and Perrault upset," he's ticking them off his fingers now, "and then you flirted with about three different guys before Henry made that stupid comment."

Her smile dies. He can see it slip out of her eyes and leave the corners of her mouth to turn downward. Her hand flies to the part of her hair where the pink dye didn't really take, where there's still blonde peeking out from between the unruly and rather haphazard few braids she put in it. She worries at the end of a braid, plucking at it and snapping its band just shy of breaking it.

He sees the goosebumps rise on her arms at the same time. "Lot, hey, c'mere," he murmurs, keeping his voice as soft and non-combative as he can make it. "Let's get you warm, all right?" He waits for her nod, which seems to be accompanied with a new set of tremors. "There you go," he soothes, nudging her back on his bed until she's between the wall and him, "blankets are right there, see? No need for all that tremblin'."

"You sure? I lost my pants between the door 'n here. Stupid leather made me feel like I was gonna rip out of them." Her voice is a mumble of protest that he's got to strain to hear. "You're gon' get a handful of my ass in the mornin', Gilly, just like last time when I kicked my pants off in my sleep."

"Thought you said you were going to have to crawl all over me in the middle of the night? Might already get a handful then," he teases, taking care not to look at her long and rather tanned legs slipping under his sheets. He busies himself with the pile of blankets he keeps on the side of his bed where she always stays. Tries not to think about all the times he woke up with her all over him. "You should think about wearing sleeves in this weather. Get you warmer real fast."

"Yeah… Bad life choices dictate I can't. Sorry." Her whisper comes out raspy. There's a tremor to it that makes her voice almost wobble, as if she's trying not to cry. "I'm just gonna keep fucking up, okay?"

Gale smiles despite himself. "Okay," he allows, piling the blankets atop her one at a time. "You wouldn't be you if there weren't fuck-ups, Squeak." He settles atop the covers beside her. Close enough to share the pillow that's more hers than his. "Got my share of those, too."

"Well," she whispers, "punchin' Henry wasn't one of yours."

"No, it wasn't," he agrees, stroking her cheek until her stray tear is no longer anywhere to be seen. "He obviously didn't know what he was talking about."

You're awfully close to the town slut, aren't you, Cleven? Careful she doesn't rub off on you, if you catch my drift… Gale shakes his head at the memory. Flexes his hand, which feels a little tender from connecting with Henry Dorrance-Jones's patrician nose and smug smile.

"He wasn't lying, Gale. I'm… you know. Easy."

"You?" He smiles as he threads his fingers through hers to stop her from undoing her braids. "You're the most complicated person I know, dotty Lottie."

Her nose wrinkles, just as he knew it would. "Wasn't what I me—"

"Fuck what you meant," he yawns, closing his eyes just to signal how done with this he is. He tries to keep his voice even as he squeezes down on her fingers. "I know you better than everybody at that party does. You just listen to me, all right?"

"Gilly…"

"You're my best friend," he whispers, clamping down on the urge to reach out and kiss her now that her breath fans out warm over his face. She's all cheap booze and tequila and that heavy perfume she wears on nights out and he couldn't love her more. "I'd punch a guy for you any day."

"You loooove me," she snickers without missing a beat, "you loooove me, yes you doooo." He can hear the smile in her voice. "You're my best friend too, silly Gilly. Promise."

Her little finger hooks around his and doesn't let go.

[basilone]

Can I request Benny x Darlene + ⁸⁴⁾ a steamed-up bathroom and cold floorboards, please? 💕

You most certainly can, thank you so much for sending this! 💙 Fair warning for this one, as it is one that packs a whole punch of feelings in it because it's a Benny/Darlene + post-stalag reunion... Also might give a tiny bit away about the state of another pairing in this particular narrative, but the main focus here very much is these two navigating Benny's homecoming.

Darlene shivers when the bedroom’s chill nips at her skin. It hadn’t been this cold when they’d first arrived – the same room they’d had last time when they were at the coast, the same comfortable bed that would get almost too warm in morning – but she supposes anything will feel colder than the steamed-up bathroom she’s just escaped from.

Escaped.

Her stomach twists at the notion. Feels like it’s sinking all the way down to her feet, plummeting abruptly toward the cold wooden floorboards without so much as a by-your-leave. Her hand shoots out before her next step becomes a stumble. She breathes, sharply, in through her nose and out through her mouth, when her fingers lock around the edge of the dresser beside the door.

Escaped is what the brass had said about Lot and Major Cleven, already back on base before all the rest of them had finally been brought home. Escaped, which Darlene supposes sounds like a prize you can win except for the part where she’s seen Lot’s hand shoot out simply to anchor Major Cleven’s trembling fist. Except for the part where they only sleep when lying together in the belly of their plane, but never in their separate bunks at night. She has seen Major Cleven’s body rest between Lot and everything else, as though their prison had created more shield than man out of him, and Lot’s eyes had followed Darlene’s every move through the plane with all the air of an animal that is not used to freedom.

She’s seen the same look in Ben’s eyes tonight.

Escaped wasn’t what they’d said about him. Liberated had been the term – the news, the joy, the pride – when they’d told her he was coming back to England.

Darlene scoffs to herself as she opens the dresser. She supposes it’s only apt to speak of liberation when you are sitting in some office back home, on some plush chair in the United States, ready to tell the people and the President that the boys are coming home. It’s a word to use in newspaper articles all right, becoming harder to stomach with every byline. Her own tummy roils at the thought of someone else telling her that Ben’s free. Liberated. She’s gonna damn well take a swing at the next fella proclaiming that sort of nonsense.

Her hands lock around the softest towel she can find. It’s softer than her hands, which are calloused and worn. Softer than the bedsheets, even, but Ben had met even those with a wonder he hadn’t…

Her fists tighten around the towel. Darlene swallows back the noise that threatens to claw out of her throat. Bites her tongue to stop it from rising again – halt that fucking wail, that horror of grief – and exhales past her teeth. Brings the towel up to her cheek to halt her lone tear in its tracks before it can multiply.

It’s not the place for tears. Not yet. She scrapes her throat. Blinks at herself in the mirror until her eyes stop blurring her freckles and the white lace of her top. Hold it the fuck together, Dar, she almost says out loud, except he’s in the warm bathroom next door and the walls here are too thin. She’s been telling herself she’ll cry later. Has been digging half-moon reminders of it into the palms of her hands since Lot’d come home and whispered a sorry into Darlene’s collar that had somehow managed to sound like an apology for all the goddamn hurt she’d caused. Has been biting it back since her arms had first locked around Benny – around what them damn Nazis had left of him, all bone and cold – and he’d been wet-cheeked enough for both of them already.

She exhales again. Clicks the dresser shut. Swings the door to the bathroom back open before the tears hit after all, welcoming its heat even though it’s gonna make her hair curl and frizz up to stay in it for long.

“Got ya a nice towel,” she announces needlessly, holding it aloft before dropping it onto the small stool beside the tub. “Knew I’d seen it somewhere in that damn dresser, hidin’ behind all them scratchier towels they want ya to use first.”

“You’re messing with their hotel business plan,” he replies, gaze gliding past the towel and straight back to her face. His mouth quirks a little, as if to signify how broadly he would’ve smiled about teasing her some months ago. “They’re going to make you pay extra for using that one.”

“I’d like to see ’em try,” snorts Darlene, vastly accustomed to all the ways in which people try and scam you out of having a good time. “Didn’t work last time we were here”– when they’d used towels like those for means other than a bath, which still brings color to her cheeks if she dwells on it too long –“and it sure as hell ain’t gon’ work on me now. They should be thankin’ us for comin’ back at all, given the damn sorry state of them pillows.”

Ben’s eyes are still soft when he looks at her. Impossibly soft, with some gentle twinkle of humor locked in them after all this time. He looks at her like he still recognizes her, from the top of her head where she’s piled most of her curls right down to her hands which are drawing small circles of comfort onto his skin. Like he still knows how to map every freckle on her skin – she’s seen his eyes follow familiar patterns, lips moving slightly as though the memory of kissing them is coming back to him the longer he looks at her – and like he remembers every detail of her eyes.

His hand is at her elbow, thumbing its crease. He doesn’t reply to her anymore, already drifting again amid the heat of the water and the touch of her fingertips. She scoots closer, as close as she can get without getting in the tub herself, and presses a close-mouthed kiss to the boniest part of his shoulder. Hears the soft rattle of his exhale. Hears the sniffle that follows it, with her lips still ghosting over his skin, with one of her stray curls tickling his collarbone, and silently blames the steam of the bathroom for misting over her own eyes.

“It’s all right,” she murmurs, summoning her last remaining vestiges what George had called bravery and what she’d dubbed foolishness. “Ben, it’s okay”– it’s not, it’s really not, but what the hell else is she gonna tell him? –“it’s all right, hey,” she hushes, leaning over to kiss the tear that’s slipping down his cheek away, “you’re here with me, all right? You’re home with me. We’re in that hotel ya dragged me to on our first weekend pass, that real long one ya’d wrangled without me even knowin’ it.” She smiles at the memory. Lets her smile rest against his cheek before kissing him again. “Thought it’d do us some good here. Ain’t nobody gon’ clock us getting into the same bed here. No write-ups happenin’. Just you an’ me.”

“Not…”

“Yeah?”

“Not a whole lot of use you’re getting,” he murmurs. “Not with… With this. Me.”

Darlene leans back just so she can fix him with the most beady-eyed stare she can muster. “You’re here, ain’t ya,” she deadpans, not even bothering to make it sound like a question. “I’m gon’ be the judge of use, Ben, Jesus Christ. Bein’ here with ya? Having…” She swallows, blinking, and almost curses as she sees the drip-drop of her own tears in his bathwater. “Having you back? Alive? Bein’ able ta… Goddamn it,” she sniffles, rubbing at her cheeks with a trembling hand, “being able ta hold ya? To kiss your cheek, to breathe ya in, to wake up with your arm around my waist? I dreamed about that the whole damn fucking time you was gone, ya hear? The whole goddamn time them Nazi fucks had ya locked up in there, I was thinkin’ about today. About right now, havin’ ya with me.”

“Dar…”

“Don’t talk to me about use, Ben,” she snaps, furiously blinking to stop herself from blubbering about the whole thing. “I ain’t in this relationship with ya just because the sex blows my fuckin’ mind, all right?” She pokes at his chest, unable to bite back a slight grin now that she’s gone and confessed that, and shakes her head as her fingers meet scar tissue that wasn’t there before. “You’re a goddamn idiot, Bernard DeMarco”– she laments, fingertips slipping beneath the water just so she can memorize that new scar –“if ya haven’t realized by now that I fucking love ya, I’d go fight the whole damn world to get to keep ya,” she whispers, hearing him go quieter than ever, “and I’d say yes to marryin’ ya in a heartbeat.”

It takes less than a heartbeat for his lips to find hers in a kiss that makes everything else go silent.

“Darling,” he murmurs, after, voice almost catching on the ache that resides inside it. “Darlene”– he exhales, breath a mere flutter against her cheek –“darling Darlene.” Ben’s lips find that little freckle, high up on her cheekbone, that he’d once proudly proclaimed was his favorite. “I love you too.”

He makes it sound like freedom.

[basilone]

May I request ²³⁴⁾ peaches with Darlene and Benny? 🏵

Hi, friend! 😊 Of course, thank you for sending it in! It's such a fitting prompt for them, and I really hope you'll like the rather fluffy direction this went into... 🧡

peaches

“You still think something’s missing?”

“Well, I dunno,” she allows, laughing as he pulls her back down into his arms, “I think I just miss stupid stuff. Usually in this weather I’d smell like peaches, ya know? We used to grow ’em in the yard back home. Lot always brought me some when we was livin’ in the city, too. She kept payin’ too much and everythin’.”

That gets a snort from Benny. “Ace still pays too much,” he allows. “Buck’s been trying to stop her from buying him drinks, because she tips like she’s leaking cash.”

“Oh, is that what he was doin’ when he almost dove on top o’ her? I thought he was tryin’ ta stop her from running off with that English fella who said he had a boat.”

“… The boat might have been a factor.”

“Uh-huh.” Darlene grins. Stretches out as languidly as their cramped bed will allow. “I think we paid too much for this room, though.”

“Worth it.”

“Ben…”

“Darlene, look at my face,” he says, obviously trying so hard not to smile that she damn near giggles at the sight of him, “I’m dead serious, it’s all worth it.”

She tries to make a show of pretending to think about it. “I’d believe ya,” she allows, “but you’re just too handsome, it’s distractin’ me from seein’ how serious ya get”– and she kisses his cheek just to make that smile break out, just to see his eyes soften –“look at ya, you make a girl wanna climb on top o’ ya and have her sweet way with ya…”

“Five minutes.”

“You’ll last longer than that.”

“A five-minute break, Darlene, Jesus Christ…”

Darlene bites her lip to keep from smiling too big. “All right. Cos you asked so nice an’ all.”

“Thank you.”

She hums softly as he draws her closer. Allows him to kiss the blush on her cheeks, the little dimple at the corner of her mouth, the smallest freckle on her jaw. She already knows it’s useless to try and stave off that fluttery feeling in her belly when he acts this way.

“Ben?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t think anything’s missin’ except a life in which I don’t smell like gasoline and paint, and you don’t look like ya lost a fight with an oxygen mask.”

“We’ll get there.”

Darlene frowns. “Get where?”

“We’ll have a life like that when we’re married, yeah? Won’t need to wear an oxygen mask for anything then and I think you’d like–”

It’s all she can do not to freeze this moment in time forever.

When we’re married. Darlene’s suddenly weightless. Floating, with only his arms as an anchor around her, not even following any of the rest of what he’s saying anymore. She hasn’t got a damn hope of talking about anything else now. Of changing the subject, pretending she didn’t hear it, pretending she hasn’t heard the love in it. All that matters is that feeling. That one small gnawing pit of a feeling she almost calls hope.

“What d’ya mean,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady, “when we’re married?”

“I mean, when you’re my wife. At least,” he says, fingertips halting at the nape of her neck, “I hope that’s what you’ll be. I’m pretty sure I should ask, first, but I haven’t got a ring yet, and I think rings are kind of important when you want to get married, and I mean you don’t have to say yes but… I just…”

Darlene blinks as his words fizzle out on a sigh. “I… Benny…”

“Sorry.”

“I-It’s okay,” she whispers, tracing the small imprint his mask left on his face. “I… I can tell this ain’t some joke. You look real serious about it.” It’d maybe be easier if he’d laugh. If he’d tell her it was just some idea to pass the time between now and home. “I just… Ben… I can’t promise all o’ that just now. Not with everything bein’ what it is. Not when we just got these… these…”

“Stolen moments?”

She bites her lip a moment to keep it from trembling. “Y-yeah.”

“Dar… hey, Darlene…”

“I want more time to love ya proper,” she chokes out, losing the fight with her trembling lip as well as with her tears. The kernel of hope fizzles and pops in her belly. “I wanna w-wake up in your arms all the d-damn time. Wanna t-talk to ya every m-m-minute o’ every day and… and… and make love to ya whenever we feel like doin’ that.” She sniffles noisily. Shifts closer to him while averting her gaze to the messy pile of uniforms on their chair. “I just wanna…”

I just wanna be with you. She halts on that cry, on that wail of possession that’s threatening to claw its way out of her. She holds him a little tighter for it anyway. Lets her hand find his waist, lets her head slip down to where his heartbeat resides. Her vision blurs, making their small room swim in front of her eyes before she squeezes them shut.

“I know,” he murmurs, loud enough for her to hear him over the thrum of his heart against her ear. “I don’t wanna leave this room. This bed. You.” His arms wrap around her a little more tightly than usual, as if he’s trying to imprint her whole being on his skin. “I think I’ll stay here forever.”

“Yeah? In this lil bed ya almost fell out of?” Darlene snickers as she blinks her tears back. “You sure you wanna? We could get a bigger bed sometime… Get us a real nice one, ya know? One with a big ol’ canopy or somethin’.” She smiles at the thought. “Summat Meatball could sleep in too, or…”

Or a baby.

“Or we could leave the dog with Buck,” argues Benny, shifting under her until his lips find her brow. “I swear, Darlene, he farts in his sleep, we can’t just –”

Darlene allows her nose to wrinkle. “That’s more than I needed to know about Buck, Ben.”

“What? No, Jesus, I meant Meatball.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” she giggles, opening her eyes just a little to see his animated gesture in mid-air. “Guess it’s just you an’ me in a big bed, then,” she adds, chasing all thought of little fingers and toes and a baby’s scent out of her head best she can. “In some sunny bedroom, in a house, with a real nice yard I can put flowers in…”

And I’ll marry ya there.

She kisses him as though she’s already said I do.

[basilone]

71) a crucifix and a thigh tattoo for whoever strikes your fancy!

Thank you very much for sending this! 💙 When I saw it, I immediately went "this is a John Brady thing" and that naturally led to a "Brady as tattoo artist"-AU that I didn't even know I needed until I had it. 😂 Soooo. I'm sharing the goodies.

“That looks really blasphemous.”

John exhales softly as the latest line, by some miracle, still ends up looking straight despite her snicker of amusement. “What does?” he asks, wiping at her skin just to check. Yeah. Straight line. “Stop moving, Maddie”– he adds, tapping her hip in warning –“unless you want these flowers to look wonky.”

“Sorry,” she says, booming her apology around the shop with all the aplomb of a woman who’s never been quiet a day in her life. Her next words are slightly quieter. Reserved only for him, if he listens closely enough. “Your necklace. It was on my thigh.”

He grunts, squinting at the rest of the linework that still needs doing. “And?”

“Crucifix on a demon? I’m surprised I didn’t catch fire.” She snickers again, louder once more, nodding at her leg. “See what I mean?”

John glances down, sighing as he realizes his gold chain has indeed escaped his shirt. Half his crucifix is dancing a slow pattern on her thigh, almost as if it is following the lines of the many peacock feathers that adorn the demonic figure he has painstakingly tattooed on her. He’d laughed when she’d first shown up with the idea for it – something from a French illustrated dictionary of demons, fine-lined and intricate – and the flowers he is crafting on her skin now flow forth from the topmost feathers well enough.

“I see it,” he says, mouth quirking around a smile he can’t bite back. “You should really get that angel done on your other thigh, Maddie”– he bows back over his work, not bothering to tuck his necklace back into his shirt –“instead of relying on me to save whatever’s left of your soul.”

“Oi!” Her indignance is a playful bark, as is the tease that follows. “Do you treat all your very beautiful paying customers like that, John?

“I’ll let you know,” he says evenly, starting work on the next petal, “once I find one.”

Maddie’s groan thankfully is not accompanied by any further movement on her part. He smiles to himself as she taps the table twice. You win, she says without speaking. Concedes her defeat more easily than he would, though he has a hunch she’ll try and find something else to win over him before the session’s done.

She always sits without complaint. Marathons a tattoo session the way Bucky Egan marathons baseball reruns, which is as admirable as it is mildly terrifying. He knows to clear his schedule for her. Gets Evelyn to run out for lunch and dinner, in the rather vain hopes that the girl will somehow find her voice somewhere between all the order mix-ups. He hasn’t had to threaten Maddie into eating in the shop since that first session when she’d almost fainted, with Buck’s mild tsk sound the only warning John had gotten just in time.

“You still good?” he asks, all the same, even though it hasn’t been twenty minutes since he last asked. Taps a pattern of don’t lie to me on her lower belly, just above her waistband. “Feeling okay?”

“Peachy, John,” she sighs, head tipping back onto his table when he wipes the excess ink off her skin. “I like this area a lot, it’s a fucking good ache you’re giving me. Don’t know what the heck Max was complaining about”– she continues, obviously remembering Maxine’s loud bitching session on Lottie’s table as well as he does –“because it ain’t as bad as the one you tried on my foot.”

“The one you almost kicked me in the nuts about some four times before Lottie finally quit laughing herself sick and took pity on me,” he grumbles, holding her steady on his table with one hand splayed out on her stomach. “I think Buck’s still got a photo of it that he’s keeping as blackmail material.”

“Blackmail material for you or for me?”

“Me,” he answers, shrugging as he dots a few short lines at the heart of her new flower. “Buck’s not that mean about you girls.”

“Unless your name is Lottie and he’s stinkin’ mad at you.”

John lets out a snort. Leans his arm on her and bends over the last line, which he has planned to sweep up to her ribcage. “They’ll make up. Last time she punched him before they made up and he got weirdly proud about that.” He rubs a small circle on Maddie’s stomach as he hears her sharper breath intake. “Breathe it through, Maddie,” he murmurs, keeping his voice soft and his touch even softer amid the sharp needle punctures, “that’s it. Good. You’re doing great today.”

She sounds almost drowsy. “Yeah?”

“Like a real angel.”

“Means a lot, John, comin’ from a Catholic and all. You’re still trying to balance my scales, huh?”

“Well,” he remarks, working as quickly as he can in the area he knows aches the most, “I’d have you know angels aren’t like those Cupid garden statues you keep thinking I’d tattoo on you. Real angels are beautiful and terrifying at the same time.”

“How does that work?” she asks, softer-voiced than he’s ever heard.

“They exist so close to God that the human mind cannot comprehend what it sees. We know there’s beauty in that – in the colors of a gemstone, the glowing coals of a fire, whatever they are likened to – but also a deep and strange sense of being other, of a sort? They do introduce themselves with be not afraid,” he remembers, as lost in his knowledge as he is in the very last of this line on her skin, “and I believe at least one prophet saw many eyes and many wings.”

Maddie’s voice doesn’t rise above a whisper. “Maybe you should draw a real angel on me after all, John. Just to be sure.”

“Next time I will,” he promises, and tucks his crucifix back into his shirt.

[basilone]

Gale/Lottie intimacy? In this economy? Yeah. Content warnings for suicidal ideation, bad coping skills, abusive home life, etc. apply. Lottie's at rock bottom and we're about to feel it real hard.

I will fall (if you come around)

Darlene’s words are a blur on paper. Ink stains and faint loops, a folded corner, hard presses of pen becoming light as a feather near the edges of the page. Lottie’s fingertips run across her signature – she can make out the Dar if she tries hard enough, softens her fingers enough – but she hasn’t a hope of deciphering the rest anymore. Maybe that’s for the better, too. She knows what it says. Has read it at least fifteen times between Max shoving it at her and the last light going out.

It’s not fully dark in here. Never is. If she tries, she can hold the letter up to the slivers of moonlight that filter through their makeshift curtains. If she angles herself just right, she’ll see the way affection blurs with anger in Dar’s writing again. If she puts in the effort, she’s sure she can brush her tears off her cheeks and read what Dar says for the sixteenth time today. Her letter’d sounded like Dar was right there, foregoing all kinds of proper grammar and landing at a place that’s quintessentially her instead. Like Dar was just talking to her – buzzing in her ear, laughing and crying and hurtin’ all at once – instead of writing to her.

Lottie folds the letter back into a smaller packet than how it’d first been folded. Tucks it in the blanket Benny’s got her stitching up, in that little pocket that’ll be hidden if she crafts it just right. She’ll keep Dar’s words in there instead of under her fingertips. Maybe they’ll disappear from her head the longer they’re in there. Maybe she’ll stop thinking I hope you’re real happy now while the back of her hand grows wet with tears. Maybe she’ll stop hearing I wish I realized how much ya wanna die while her stomach loops into endless knots.

She stifles the hurt same way she always does. Digs her nails into the palms of her hands. Wishes she still kept them long enough to draw blood, but she hasn’t kept them that way for ages. She doesn’t make a sound. The pressure of wanting to scream builds in her eyes long enough to make them sting. Bubbles up and down her throat like a whole slew of champagne. There’s a bite to pain that doesn’t ever feel like alcohol’s fizz. A sharp snap in her belly that makes her fists curl and makes her hunch in on herself.

Her mother would call her wounded. Would say that with the same amount of distaste she had for the dying parakeet and her uncle’s drunk driving. You were born to it, Charlotte. Born to this violent nature. Wasn’t that what her mother’s letter had said? It’d read like a goddamn condolences card – so sorry, my daughter is dead to me – written by somebody who’d done her damndest best to pass heaven’s judgment down to her a little too early.

She doesn’t know where that letter’s gone. She’d left it out on the table. Hadn’t even read past your father and I are most disappointed by your conduct and certainly hadn’t read beyond the Rivers-Mayhew family expresses no further desire to accommodate you in future. It’s all fancy speak for don’t you dare come home. It’s all talk for you have embarrassed us for the last fucking time, which seemed a little more definite than usual. Lottie knows she hasn’t been mentioned on Christmas cards for at least six seasons and counting, now, so she kind of wonders what the hell else they’re gonna do. Cut her out of several wills, most likely. Not open the door to her on Thanksgiving, if she’d ever bother to swing by. She’s already dropped the Mayhew part of her name, so what else is left to discard?

Lottie scrapes her throat in the quiet. Wipes at her cheeks again, a little harder than before. Makes her skin tingle with warmth a moment. Nobody close to her stirs from their bed at her sound. Little One-Eye and Max are curled around each other in the next bunk, supposedly all cried out. She can make out the line of John Brady’s shoulders, who never faces the room but always faces Perrault, and the heavy set of Bucky’s shoulders as well. If she glances up, she’ll see Benny’s hand dangle over the side of his bed like he’s searching for Dar to pull close to him.

Dar deserves that. Deserves somebody like Ben, who’ll curl around her letters and sleep on top of them just because they carry her scent. Deserves somebody who’ll love her so much better than Lottie can. Ben’s been talking about marrying her the moment he gets out, as if their current imprisonment is the only unfortunate setback he can ever see in their whole relationship. She’ll say yes. She’d told Benny that, earlier. Had forced the words out of her throat because they had to be said, had to be talked about. Because it was all she could read between the lines of Dar’s letter. All of that…

She sniffles again. Louder this time, as though the hurt can’t help but bubble up and make noise. She used to get shut in her room for making a sound like that. Used to have to stomp down on it so hard before her mother heard her, lest she was spoonfed some cough medicine and made out to be that sickly child again. Everything had always been about her mother, and when it could only be about Lottie there would be hell to pay for it somehow.

It’s all about me now, mama.

Lottie hunches in on herself. Tucks her chin to her knees and hugs her legs until she feels small again. If she makes herself small enough, maybe there won’t be anybody to see her hurt. Maybe it won’t be all about her, then, and she won’t need to hurt herself more. Maybe things will start making more sense once that letter pops back up on the table long enough to tell her there’s no going home and there’s no going back and there’s no…

There’s a tap on her ankle.

“Hey.”

She blinks at the rasped greeting. It sounds almost groggy, as if he just wandered straight out of his bunk mid-slumber and landed himself here. Like he’s still asleep, or at least the part of him that forgot he doesn’t greet her anymore is.

“Hi,” she exhales.

Gale Cleven folds himself into her space while she’s still busy rubbing her cheeks free of tears. Her elbow meets some part of him – she can feel the resistance, the lack of give – but he doesn’t make a sound at that. He simply bundles up in the space between her and her pillow as though that’s the sanest place for him to be.

“You need new socks,” she breathes, spotting the telltale hole near his little toe. “Fuck, Gilly, why’re you always wearin’ them old rags”– she knows why, but she’s still gonna fuss about it –“you’re gon’ catch your death like that.”

“Benny’s making me some.”

She turns her head sideways to study him. He’s copying the way she’s seated – arms wrapped around his legs, head on his knees – and even his hair seems to fall into the same kind of messy tousle as hers. His eyes gleam in the dim light. Lottie thinks she’d be able to draw him from memory alone. Thinks she’d capture that little quirk of his mouth that he always has when he’s unsure of what to say next. Thinks she’d translate his hand gestures in a small flurry of motion, so at odds with how calm his hands are in the air.

“I burned your letter,” he says, then, and she has to look away. He scrapes his throat. “The one from your mother.”

That’s all right, she wants to say. Not a great loss. Her words feel stuck. Like they are pressed against her voice but not entering it, not forming familiar shapes in her mouth. She wants to talk over how soft he’d sounded, even though it’d felt like a whole weight in his speech at the same time. Wants to land in a place where Gale doesn’t understand.

A sob wrenches free from her lungs instead.

It’s ugly. Twisted. Fierce despite how much she tries to bite it back. Maybe worse because she’s clenching her hands into fists at the same time. Always made worse because she fights the sound, the break, the point where she almost shatters. Wounded, her mother’s voice scathes. Wounded, wounded, wounded.

“Sshh, Squeak,” he hushes. “Sshh, it’s all right.” He sounds like he believes it. Sounds the way he had when she’d gotten shot, before he’d realized the shot had been meant for him. Calls her Squeak again like he never stopped, like he hasn’t been referring to her as Ace since she got here. “Hey, you’re okay”– she’s not, but it’s almost admirable how certain he sounds –“c’mere.”

She hasn’t a hope of fighting her tears when his hand lands warm in her neck and his other hand cups her cheek. The noise that escapes her is the ugliest whimper she’s ever uttered, but all it does is make him hush her more in that same tone. She wants to fall against him. Wants to lean into his hands, even though it feels like that might jinx the whole feeling and make it hurt worse. Wants to exist in a place where she’s allowed to hurt, even if it’s just for a little while.

“W-W-Why?” she blubbers, desperately trying to keep her voice from breaking too loudly.

“It wasn’t constructive. The letter.”

“It’s my m-mother, Gilly.” Of course it ain’t constructive when it’s her. Of course it’s worth burning. “Had worse from her.”

He hums at that. Unfolds from his position only to huddle closer to her. One leg under her knees. One leg at her back. He thumbs at her cheek as he jostles closer to her, as though he means to wipe some of her excess tears away. He’s kicked her blanket away to the foot of her bunk. She can’t reach Dar’s letter now without leaning away from his touch.

She doesn’t want to lean away.

“You didn’t need to read that again,” he murmurs, so close to her ear that it’s like she’s hearing him over comms. “Your mother’s not right, Squeak. Never has been.”

“You n-never met her.”

“Lucky for her.”

She hiccups once. Chances a glance at him. “What’d you do,” she wonders out loud, seeing the set of his jaw, “if ya did?”

“Tell her I don’t know how her daughter ended up being good when she’s all wicked like that.”

“Gilly…”

“Lot.” His fingers brush a stray tear off her cheek. He doesn’t meet her eyes, not now that so much hangs in the balance between them. “You saved my life.”

She shrugs at that. Doesn’t even really feel the sting in her shoulder anymore. Doesn’t feel like it was anything special. They’d all die for him – every last one of these men and women would, without thinking twice about it – but somehow she’s the one who almost did. She’s the one who made that call. Took a bullet for him just like that, just because it was more important for him to live. For him to survive this fight.

“I had to,” she whispers, leaning into his touch as much as she dares. “You matter, Gilly. All right? I just…”

“And then,” he murmurs, ignoring everything she says that could lead to an argument down the road, “I crashed. Without you.”

A phonecall at the flak house. Doctors and nurses she’d had to fool into thinking she’s just fine and dandy. Nights curled around Meatball because he wouldn’t stop howling and Dar couldn’t look at him without burstin’ into tears. Knowing she would’ve been there if she hadn’t saved his life. Would’ve been in that seat beside him rather than Benny. Benny’d still be with Darlene if…

She swallows. “That was mighty stupid of ya.”

“Yeah.” His laugh is so soft she has to strain to hear it. “Yeah, it was.”

“If we get a do-over in life,” she whispers, “that’s the one.”

“You’re here now,” he says instead, as if those weeks… As if that’d been anything close to all right. “That was real stupid of you.”

She snorts a little at that. Can’t refute it. Can’t very well say it wasn’t when she spent the better part of those weeks angling for the right way to crash. The right place to land. Calculating where he might be and taking any mission in the area. Thinking she might come to rest beside him, body to body, hearts buried in the same place because hers felt like it was about to stop beating anyway. Not a tomb in the sky, like they’d talked about, but something harder. Something real.

Something that hurt.

I wanted to die, but then you were alive and I had to find a way to breathe again. “I’m here now,” she exhales.

His exhale sounds like it could be her twin. “It’s real hard to stay mad at you, Squeak.”

She flinches with the sting of that. She’s seen Gale’s anger. It’d been Brady and Max catching her after she’d walked through the gate. It’d been the Russian – Petrov, blonde and angelic and somehow all-knowing – who’d talked her through the camp and taught her where to look and what to see. It’d been Bucky following her like a dog off its leash, almost as if he wanted to nudge her into speaking with the one person who couldn’t even look her in the eye.

She’s carried the brunt of Gale’s rage all along. Is scrubbed raw by it. Taking the bullet. Taking the plane. Telling herself it’s for him when it’s for her, too. She knows his anger like she does her own. Doesn’t want to be the one to leave first. Doesn’t want him to leave first. Doesn’t want there to be any leaving.

“You’ve been doin’ just fine being mad,” she sniffs. Bites her lip because that’s one more thing she can’t take back. “It’s all right, Gilly,” she whispers, swallowing again, “I’m used to…”

His arms wrap around her, then, choking the last of her words off. “None of it is all right.” And I’m not fine. She hears it in his ragged breath, so close to her ear. Feels it in the ache of his too-tight squeeze. “But we gotta be fine, Lot, you and me,” he says, as if he still believes they can be. “We gotta be…”

She lets herself fall. Lets herself move to the side, against his shoulder. Doesn’t apologize, just like he doesn’t, because being held like this is something you can’t let happen when you’re mad at somebody. Because she knows him – knows that little tug on her hair, that tap to her ankle, that sigh that says he’ll forgive her again – and he still knows her. Maybe he’s the only one that really does.

“Stay, Squeak,” he murmurs, quietening her further. “Stay with me, you hear?”

Lottie no longer knows how to be anywhere he isn’t.

[basilone]

The Tuskegee airmen arrive in camp. Max tries to fit them into her routine.

[read more on ao3!]

Well, folks, we're here. My series the earth is run by mothers is officially complete with this new, last installment of the lot. I hope you'll enjoy this final piece! Thank you for going on this flight with me. 💙

[basilone]

For every bit of writing that makes it onto this blog, there's also writing that doesn't. I recently realized that I've never shared a piece that's purely Lottie/Darlene, even though I'd already written a good chunk of it. I spent some time completing it, because y'all have been too sweet about them both and I'd love to share the start of their relationship with you. This is Lottie/Darlene stateside, pre-England, figuring themselves out as they go along. Warnings apply for their talk about homophobia, sex, and their not-so-great home lives. They also get a little smutty about it (it's Lottie/Darlene, of course they do), so that's why there's a content warning. 😉I hope you'll enjoy it!

“Lot?”

“Yeah?”

“You goin’ home soon?”

Lottie blinks up at the ceiling. Sometimes, she forgets who she’s told. Who’s been made privy to her life like that – thrown out of the house, working odd jobs she’s not suited for – and who she’s not managed to tell anything about it just yet. She’s mentioned it at flight training. Shrugged it off like water gliding off a duck, because some of the girls were feeling mighty stressed about whatever the hell their families were gonna say about joining up with the army. She’s certainly mentioned it to the fellas she’s flying with most, though she hasn’t said why.

“Nawh,” she says, now, rolling her head as well as her eyes. “Nobody’s gonna want me there.” She tries to smile. Feels it strain at her mouth, worn too thin and brittle, before it’s safe to exhale a small sigh. “Why’d you ask?”

“Them society pages said your family’s got some anniversary type o’ thing going on? Least, that’s what Christina Heartfield was sayin’. She keeps up on that sorta information like it’s gonna win the war or somethin’.” Darlene’s slight scoff tells Lottie exactly what she makes of that. “Thought ya might, I dunno, head back home.” The bed dips slightly under Darlene’s weight as she shifts atop it, restless like she’s been the past few nights. “Whatchu mean, nobody’s gonna want ya there?”

“Tiny needs to keep her gossip mouth shut.” Lottie doesn’t put a lick of venom behind the words. As far as gossips go, Heartfield won’t hold a candle to her mother. “And I mean that they won’t open the damn door for me, probably. Or they’ll open it up but I’ll be spendin’ every moment of that party with half the family watching me like a damn hawk and peckin’ at all my mistakes.” She lets out a long-suffering sigh. Chances a glance at Darlene, who’s turned toward her and is studying her a little too closely. “Don’t look at me like that, Dar.”

“Like what?”

“Like that,” she says, turning onto her side and raising an eyebrow at her. “Like you’re feeling sorry for me or some shit. It’s fine. I don’t wanna go home, all right?”

“Sure. Don’t mean it don’t sting.” Darlene’s half-shrug slips the band of her nightgown off her shoulders. She doesn’t bother putting it back – Lottie’s not even sure she felt it – but peers at Lottie with all the might of someone who’s trying to decipher something instead. “It’s different when you got a choice,” muses Darlene out loud, voice hushed in the quiet of a too-warm bedroom. “When ya can just decide whether you wanna go back or not. Like the rest of them girls do. But when it’s you and me, we don’t get choice. We just get told to please not come back.”

Lottie feels her mouth go dry. “Dar…��

“I left when I was six months shy of turnin’ eighteen. Woulda waited, except my mama’s new boyfriend was a piece o’ junk that deserved a beatin’”– and Darlene’s matter-of-fact tone tells Lottie exactly who delivered on that –“and I got caught with my head under Janie Charles’s skirt around that same time. Didn’t feel like stickin’ around for that sermon any. Pastor damn near got himself a heart attack when he caught us in the back o’ the church.”

“Darlene,” says Lottie, because the words head and Janie and skirt and caught don’t make full sense, “what’re you sayin’?” She studies the little red curls plastered to Darlene’s freckled brow. Easier than looking into her eyes and seeing herself staring back. “You… uh.”

“Made Janie Charles cry out for Jesus in a church pew with my tongue between her thighs?”

“Jesus,” says Lottie, before she can stop herself, “that’s worse than me getting caught with my hand up Rosalie Devereaux’s skirt at my family’s Christmas brunch while she was kissing my neck.”

“I don’t know,” says Darlene, seemingly not caring about the furious blush that’s working its way into Lottie’s cheeks or the brewing fear that melts heavy on Lottie’s tongue the longer Darlene keeps talking, “seems to me like your family cares more about what’s proper than mine. All my mama said to me was Jesus Christ, Darlene, at least we know you ain’t gonna starve earning your living on your back. I’d already gotten an earful for givin’ one of them Lawson boys a hand in the back o’ his truck about a week or two before the Janie thing happened, see?” The laugh that escapes Darlene is throaty, twisted with the same sort of grim amusement that’s been coiling in Lottie’s belly for months now. “When I said she was one to talk, gettin’ five different kids outta four different fellas the way she did, that was that. Can’t stay in a place like that no more.”

“My mother said I was unnatural.” Lottie blinks at the memory. “Rosalie, bless her dumb little heart, said it was all my idea. That she couldn’t stop me from…” Her fist still balls around the bedsheets at the accusation. “She wanted it, Dar, I wouldn’t just’ve…” Wouldn’t have forced a goddamn thing, she almost says, except even the thought of saying it fills her throat with bile. “She got away with Bible study and a stay at a cousin’s summer home. Me? Couldn’t even ask for my mother to pass the salt without her cryin’ into her plate about the vile creature she gave birth to.”

“All your idea to have her lips on your neck and her hand probably already working to get to touch your tits, huh,” says Darlene, folding her own hand around Lottie’s fist so decisively that Lottie releases the bedsheets in a hurry. “Not your fault she feels ashamed of who she is, Lot, all right? Ain’t a goddamn thing wrong about ya. I’m gonna fight your mama any day ya want me to, ya hear me?” Darlene’s fingers squeeze down tight. Lottie still can’t look at her fully. Studies the little freckle near the corner of Darlene’s lower lip instead. “Sorry I brought it up. ’Course ya ain’t goin’ home. You gonna stay with me, have some fun.”

“Fun, huh?”

“Sure thing, sugar.” The little freckle moves with Darlene’s brilliant smile. “This Rosalie, she the only one or just the only one ya got caught with?”

“I, uh,” says Lottie, “might’ve gotten tangled up with Henry Dorrance-Jones a few times. And Feline Montparssat is a real good kisser,” she mumbles, “and, uh, Barbara from daddy’s accounting firm? Kind of?”

“Kind of?”

“She, uh, slipped her fingers into my panties?” Lottie hates that she makes it sound like a question. “I didn’t do anything to her except some kissin’, she said she didn’t want more trouble. But she… uh. It felt really nice?”

“Yeah?” Darlene’s grin broadens to the point where Lottie can’t help but look at her. Her dark eyes sparkle with good humor, corners of her eyes crinkling into a fond smile, and the freckles that dot her nose move up into the little scrunch of amusement Lottie knows all too well. “Of course that feels nice, Lot, Jesus,” cackles Darlene, then, squeezing her hand again. “Glad to know I ain’t the only one making eyes at girls and fellas alike.”

“You’re the only one actin’ normal about it, though.” The only one who hasn’t made me feel like there’s something wrong with that. “Everybody else has… I don’t know.” She can’t really meet Darlene’s eyes any, now. Can’t do more than shrug and pull her hand out of Darlene’s grasp. “All them girls made it feel like a game. Barbara said I was a sweet little thing. Was practically cooin’ about it while she tried and mostly failed to get me off. And Feline’s always kissed just about anybody.”

“And Rosalie was fine doin’ anything as long as she wouldn’t get caught,” continues Darlene, “and we all know Henry’s got more notches in his bedposts than… Aw, shoot, Lot, I didn’t mean… Hey now…”

“Yeah, well,” sniffles Lottie, wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand, “one of them notches is my virginity, and he was an ass about it, and I still let him because at least then that’d be out of the damn way.” She tries to smile at Darlene. Is sure it comes off awfully shaky and watery, if the feeling of her trembling lip is anything to go by. “And then I c-continued to let him, and p-p-probably racked my total notches up to a handful, b-because… b-b-because…”

“Because at least Henry’s not a girl. And if you’ve got a cock inside ya, and ya like the feelin’, then maybe you ain’t interested in girls after all. And if he fucks ya just right, and you get off on it, at least you won’t be thinkin’ about what it’d feel like to have a girl’s fingers inside o’ ya while her mouth’s on yours.”

Lottie sobers up so abruptly she feels like she’s been doused with cold water. “Dar…”

Darlene’s own smile is brittle. Fleeting. “It don’t work like that, Lot. I tried real hard to make it work and I know it don’t. Highlight of my year was getting fucked by some fella I never even learned the name of and all I thought about while he was doin’ it was how it’d feel to press my mouth between the legs of the pretty girl I’d seen at the dance earlier that night. I clenched around his cock thinkin’ about buryin’ my tongue inside her sweet drippin’ cunt and he was bragging summat fierce about makin’ me do that at first.”

“At first?”

“Well, I told him real quick that I can do that sorta thing whenever I like,” grins Darlene, eyes sparkling, “just to make a fella I’m bored with finish faster. He didn’t like that. Wanted to black my eye about it, so I kicked him in the balls until he started to cry and then took off runnin’.”

“Jesus, Dar,” snickers Lottie, trying to ignore the squirmy feeling deep inside her own belly. “Sounds like we both got shit taste in fellas, at least.”

“At least my taste in girls is good.”

“Is it? Pretty sure mine ain’t.” Lottie rolls her eyes for emphasis. “Or maybe I just need to be with a girl who doesn’t think it’s some game,” she adds, belated, trying not to stare too hard at the freckles that dot Darlene’s nose. “But I wouldn’t know how to recognize that kinda girl.”

“Wouldn’t ya?”

“No?”

“Not even if one’s, I dunno, currently starin’ at ya and tryin’ to figure out the best way to plant a kiss on ya?”

Lottie can practically feel the weight of the question linger in the space between them. Sure, Darlene said it with a smile. Said it like it doesn’t have to mean something more than it does. Like it’s just a little thing she’s offering. But she’s also implied it’s not a game. That this is something that could be… Could just be real.

And it’s not like she hasn’t thought about it any. Sharing a room with Darlene almost demands that she thinks about it plenty. Thinks about it when she’s brushing her teeth while Darlene’s doing her hair. Thinks about it when Darlene’s applying balm to her feet, when Darlene’s giggling over something she read in a magazine, when Darlene’s eating peaches with cream out of a bowl. Thinks about it while she’s getting ready for bed and sees Darlene all sprawled out on the bed beside hers. Thinks about it while she’s in the shower, while she’s out dancing, while she’s… she’s…

Oh.

Darlene’s mouth is soft. So gentle against her own, sweet about it in a way that aches, unhurried like Darlene always seems to be. She’s just there with her, hand warm against Lottie’s cheek, breath fanning out over Lottie’s lips, lips tasting more like sugar than the candy Lottie’s been eating. Pressing into Lottie’s space more decisively when she doesn’t say no.

The rush of her heartbeat pulses in her ears when she kisses Darlene back.

Her breath shudders between them a moment before Darlene’s mouth crashes onto hers wholly. Before Darlene’s tongue swirls around the tip of her own tongue, daring, challenging, and Lottie can’t help but lick her way into Darlene’s mouth just to savor her, to taste her, to get close to her. Her hand’s on Darlene’s cheek and it feels like she’s smiling the same way Lottie’s smiling, mouth quirking up between kisses, breath going just a little ragged for it.

Darlene’s tone is more moan than speech. “Lot…”

She wants to hear that again. Wants to hear Darlene say her name again – moan her name again – and so she chases the sound. Chases it right into Darlene’s mouth, pliant and warm and so goddamn soft, until her tongue slips against Darlene’s and Darlene’s hands fly into her hair in response. She can’t stop kissing her now that Darlene holds her between two hands, fingers wandering, pulling her closer still. Darlene’s all noise about it – little pants and exhales, small whimpers Lottie can’t help but capture – and she’s moving closer, toppling against her, leg and arm and all the rest of her fanning out over Lottie’s body without a care.

“Fuck.” She exhales. Makes it sound like a punctuation mark against Darlene’s throat before kissing her there too. “Dar… Dar, please…” She hardly knows why she’s begging. Doesn’t really realize that she is until Darlene’s mouth nips at her earlobe and Darlene’s breath lodges warm against her ear. “Darlene…”

“You doin’ okay there, pretty girl?”

Lottie nods, breathless, when Darlene pulls back to look at her. Her red hair is a halo in this light, springy with unruly curls, and her freckles move as she scrunches her nose up and grins down at Lottie. Lottie’s never been anyone’s pretty girl before. Hasn’t been complimented like this, so genuine that it makes her head spin a little, so sweetly that it almost makes tears spring into her eyes.

“Maybe,” she says, a little breathless about it, feeling strangely weightless about it, “my taste in girls ain’t that bad after all.”

“Yeah?” Darlene’s giggle lights up the room in such a way that it makes all of Lottie’s hair stand on end. “Got a taste for me?” she teases, voice lower and more like velvet than Darlene’s got any fucking right to sound. She fixes Lottie with her best stare, challenging but seemingly amused all at once. “Do ya really?”

“Fuck, you don’t even…” Lottie groans. Wedges her knee between Darlene’s legs just because she can, just because it makes Darlene fall against her more and makes her make that little noise of pleasure again. Darlene’s all press of curves at her hips, nightgown hiked up her thighs so high that it makes Lottie’s throat go dry, and Lottie clenches her hands uselessly to stop her hands from wandering over her bare skin. “I really wanna taste you, Dar,” she admits, heat unfurling in her whole body, “wanna touch you and kiss you and…”

Darlene rakes her hair back. The band of her nightgown loosens with the motion, showing the soft swell of small breasts beneath the fabric, revealing more freckles that Lottie needs to trace with her mouth if Darlene will let her. “And lemme kiss ya too?” asks Darlene, blush peppering her freckles and turning them redder still. “Yeah?” she checks, smiling, to Lottie’s vigorous nods. “C’mere, honey, let’s get a proper taste of ya…”

A proper taste, Lottie finds, is Darlene’s hands in her hair – pulling and cajoling – and Darlene’s mouth and tongue roaming everywhere over her face and her neck and her shoulders – licking, nipping, suckling, kissing, kissing, kissing – and Darlene pressing against her, leaning in, smelling like peaches and cream and the sweetest thing Lottie’s ever had. A proper taste, she finds, is kissing Darlene back and letting her kisses trail over Darlene’s collarbone until she shivers. A proper taste is interlocking their hands and letting her other hand roam over Darlene’s bare leg, her side, her hair, her smiling face, kissing her all the while.

A proper taste also is Darlene’s nightgown losing the fight for propriety and Lottie solving that by simply covering her with her mouth. She doesn’t think twice about it. Doesn’t think Darlene minds, not with the mewl that escapes her when Lottie’s mouth locks around her nipple. And that makes her want more, makes her bold. Makes her slip the other band off Darlene’s shoulder just so she can kiss a path from one breast to another and make Darlene noisier about it. Makes her nudge her thigh up between Darlene’s legs until she feels that wet press of heat, until all she can think about is what it’d be like to get a taste of Darlene there, until Darlene pants out something between a laugh and a cry about it.

“You’re right,” says Lottie, smug as anything, feeling like she’s gonna fly and crash all at once the same way she does when she glides a plane home, “this is the kinda fun we should be havin’.”

“I’m a terrible influence, ya know,” snickers Darlene, eyes sparkling with mirth. “Look at ya, Lot, kissin’ a girl all improper”– she’s teasing, pinching Lottie’s side as she does –“makin’ a girl wanna eat you up like that, lookin’ like ya do…”

Lottie’s decision is lightning-quick, as though she’s taking a shot in clear blue skies. “I ain’t stoppin’ you.”

“No taking it slow with ya, huh?”

“Dar,” she says, brushing Darlene’s stray curl away from her cheek, “I’ve been thinking about this since the day we met and I thought oh sweet baby Jesus I wanna kiss that girl…”

“If it helps at all,” says Darlene, grinning, “I thought oh good Lord, they put me with the really hot girl, how am I gon’ survive this without makin’ a fool of myself?”

Lottie snorts out a laugh at that. “We’re both fools. Should’ve just made out about this weeks ago.”

“Wanna make it up for it now?”

She nods up at Darlene, breathless, wanting more than she’s ever wanted anything in her whole life. And Darlene, sweet as anything, merely smiles and wordlessly issues the challenge that has always landed Lottie in trouble before: the hell you waitin’ for?

Lottie’s never been the type of girl who needs to be asked this twice.

[basilone]

Smutty nonsense under the cut? From me? More likely than you think. Benny/Darlene, short but explicit, some college AU nonsense in which she is more experienced than he is. Semi-written with the prompts 'lingering touch', 'tug on hair', 'kiss along inside of thigh' in mind (so that tells you where this is headed 👀).

xxxxxxxxxxx

“Ben…”

His name is a sigh. An exhale. A breathy sound that escapes her lips, slightly muffled by the pillow that she’s clutching and by the ceiling fan’s noise overhead. She never calls him Benny in these moments, except when she’s laughing into his kisses and teasing him something fierce. When it’s not yet serious, like now.

He loves the way she says his name when it’s getting serious. When she’s arching into his every touch and unbuttoning her dress for him, guiding his hands like he’s gonna learn how to deal with these small buttons next time. When she’s kissing his jaw and whispering in his ear that she really wants this. That she wants him.

The thought makes him smile. She’s half out of her dress with her red hair tumbling over her bare shoulders and the denim fabric bunching up at her sides. He palms at himself when his mouth closes around the sheer fabric that covers her nipple and his hand slips one of her bra straps down before she can do it herself. Her breath hitches at the contact. He hears it stutter in her chest before it becomes a gasp in her mouth, wanting and needing and asking him for more without saying another word.

He doesn’t linger too long. Leaves her partially covered by that sheer little number she didn’t warn him about, nipples peeking through the fabric and soft swell of her curves perfectly visible. He kisses right down to her waist, following her smattered freckles, groaning when her foot travels up his body in response. Her laughter is breathy, heady and warm in this heat, and her hand brushes his hair back the longer he lingers on kissing her belly.

“Ben,” she says again, and he grins up at her when her hand’s touch becomes a tug that makes his cock strain against his jeans almost painfully. “Don’t tease…”

He grunts in response. Shifts on the bed until he can undo his belt buckle with one hand while skimming the underside of her breasts with the other. The sound of it makes her push herself up on her arms, lounging so expectantly that he definitely can’t help but chuckle about it. She’s all want wrapped up in a very pretty package, so comfortable being naked that she makes him feel better about undressing in front of her too. Makes him feel better about wanting her so much that he will react to her like this every time he’s with her.

She’s working on the last buttons of her denim dress. Her fingers don’t tremble like his do, though he’s mostly got that under control now. His mouth goes dry at it anyway – the little freckles visible even on her lower belly, the curve of her hips, the…

“Gotcha,” she grins, smug as anything, letting one half of her dress drop to the bed while leaving the other half draped over her. She’s all alabaster and softness, round curve of her hip settling against his wandering hand, small patch of red curls peeking out from between her thighs. “Figured ya needed a surprise…”

He laughs, then, and settles between her legs like he’s been there a million times before. “You’re killing me here,” he laments between his laughter, eyes never straying from how unraveled she looks like this. “When’d you take them off, hm?” he asks, fingertips lingering close to where her panties would’ve rested on her hip if she was still wearing them. “Before or after we got dinner?”

“Just now, when you was talkin’ on the phone,” she breathes, letting her legs fall open to accommodate him. “Didn’t wanna waste time. They were so goddamn wet from all the kissin’ we did, Ben…”

He presses a kiss to her thigh in response. Feels her tug on his hair again, more insistent, when his tongue draws out a small pattern in the kiss’s wake. He can’t help but grin about it. Can’t help but press more kisses to her thigh even as his hand slowly pulls her dress away.

“You,” he breathes, drinking the sight of her in, “were not”– more kisses, pressed so close to the apex of her thighs that she’s left squirming under his lips –“kidding.” He can see how damp her curls have gotten, how wet and slick her cunt seems to be. “Fuck, Darlene,” he whispers, caught between her thighs, “please let me taste you, please let me…”

“C’mere, Ben,” she exhales, hand fastening in his hair while her fingertips deftly slip down to where he most wants to kiss her. “See this”– he can’t unsee that little glistening nub that makes her breath shake when her finger brushes past it –“that’s where I need your tongue, baby,” she whines, spreading wider for him, “want ya to kiss me right the–ohhh!”

He closes his eyes a moment as his lips meet a taste so sweet that he may as well have been given heaven. “Right there?” he checks, then, categorizing her oh sweet fucking baby Jesus as a sign that he might just be getting this right. He can’t help but grin up at her and tease about it. “You sure?”

“Goddamn it, Ben, yeah, fuck, I’m fucking sure, I’m… fuck,” she whimpers, falling back against her pillow, arching against his mouth with all the desperation he recognizes as her need to get off. “Please lick me right there, baby, I need… I fucking… Ben…”

He locks his arms around her thighs. Crashes her against his mouth. He’s never been harder in his life, but this isn’t about him. He’s going to come apart just from tasting her, from having her move against his tongue like she’s doing now, from her hand in his hair and her thighs trembling under his touch. She’s too fucking loud for this dorm by far, climbing in pitch the more he drinks her in, begging for his fingers already just like the last time she rode his thigh and his hand, garbled little moans and sweet nothings escaping her all the while.

“Fuck, darling,” he exhales, pressing a few stray kisses to her thigh, feeling entirely drunk off her alone, “I wanna do this for hours…”

Her giggle is the true music to his ears.

[basilone]

the long bright dark ∞ main fic of the form & void series War chose Ronald Speirs a long time ago. He has always claimed to be at peace with that. Now, as his life finally leads him into battle-torn Europe, he believes that he is entering his final months of service. With the thought of death a near-constant companion and the rush of combat running rampant in his veins, he may yet be forced to re-examine what it truly means to be bonded to a god...