#ch: willie neumann

[latibvles]

AND ANOTHER ONE. willie x brady 'a kiss while slow dancing' because They ❤️

A KISS WHILE DANCING.

u guys remember when John Brady promised Willie three whole dates in London because I do. I think about that every day actually. Anyways here's them they make me so [SCREAMS]. I need to be adopted by them actually I think that would fix me.

—

Never in his life has John Brady been more grateful for their monthly passes to London. Three whole dates, that’s what he promised Willie in Africa, and now he was making good on that promise.

She’d taken his arm, and then his hand, earlier on and even though she’d kissed him in his fort, the wind felt knocked out of John all the same when she took it. Sometimes he thinks she’s doing this on purpose — all her little smiles and squeezes of his hand meant to yank him like a dog on a chain. He knows she isn’t though, because everytime he turns it on her, her cheeks are just as flushed, her smile just as beautifully shy.

He feels almost like a teenage boy again as twilight settles, they’ve still got time before the blackout. Yesterday they saw what they could of the British Museum — John watched Willie eye things with a curiosity that warmed him from the inside out. He asked questions just to hear her prattle off facts about where things were from, their significance.

He didn’t kiss her last night and he was still kicking himself for it now.

He wanted to. Hell he'd been thinking about it the whole damn time — all he could ever think about was how she'd kissed him in his fort. How the heat in there paled in comparison to what had finally come to a boil between them. The feeling of her hips against his callous-torn hands, and the damn noise that she made against him, unexpected and pleased.

Why he doubted that she'd want to kiss him again after that, John doesn't know. He'd just thought too hard about it and wanted to knock his head against the doorframe once the door shut with such a definitive click.

Willie stalls as they pass by a building — a quick glance inside tells him it’s some makeshift dance hall — music spilling out into the cobbled street, and John looks back at her curiously as she eyes it with a smile that makes him take in a soft breath. He doesn’t think he’s ever really gonna get over all the little expressions she makes, contained yet bursting with color. He wants to memorize them like his favorite sheet music.

“You’ve played this one before,” she points out, and John starts listening properly. Huh, she’s right. His foot ends up tapping the tempo almost instinctively. Still, he can’t help teasing.

“Paid that much attention to me, huh?”

“Well I definitely wasn’t dancing,” is Willie’s immediate straightforward reply with a raised brow and- Oh. Right. He can feel the heat creeping up his neck even as he smiles, eyebrows raising to his hairline as he scratches at the tip of his nose. He feels almost sheepish at that admittance, as expected as it may be. He’d be an idiot to pretend he couldn’t feel her eyes on him during all those nights in the Officer’s Club — he’d only hoped that that soft look was reserved for him as opposed to being brought on by the drink in her hand. Well it was, Johnny, so what’re you gonna do about it now?

It feels like a bit of a lightbulb moment. He’s tugging her towards the open door.

“C’mon.”

“Huh?” He looks back at her just to drink in that mildly confused and tenderly surprised expression on her face. It’s nice being the one to throw her off her rhythm for once, instead of it being the other way around.

“If you think I’m skipping out on a chance to be your first dance this whole damn war, we’re getting your head checked.” So maybe he’s being dramatic, but she doesn’t oppose him. She just squeezes his hand, lets him lead her into the dimly lit space. Tables and chairs scattered about, refreshments, people in service uniforms and civilian clothes all dot the space and occupy the floor itself. They slip in effortlessly as one song ends and another begins — still jazzy, but a lot slower. It’s the tempo that has him pausing, looking at her. “Do you mind?”

Willie’s expression is unreadable for a couple moments — but then she’s squeezing his hand again. Maybe it’s the space making it feel more intimate, the way she flushes and gives him that indiscernibly soft look of hers.

“Can’t step on your toes if we’re not moving too fast,” she breathes out. Her grip tightens on his hand, not enough to hurt, but still tight. He wants to ask and so he does.

“Never done this before?”

“Never done it well.” John smiles at that, in a way he hopes is reassuring before they find their own spot on the floor — he leads one of her hands to his shoulder and tries not to shiver at the barely-there weight of it, his hand finding the small of her back. Being this close to her elicits a full-body reaction he has to stave off: a shiver as she looks up at him with those impossibly dark eyes, a trembling breath he tries to keep even. Her eyes dart to their feet and John leads them in a sway.

“Well that I just don’t believe,” he counters, which has her looking up again.

“Are you calling me a liar, John Brady?”

“I’m calling you painstakingly humble,” Willie laughs a little at that, with a slight shake of her head . The sound feels like an achievement in its own right. Not because of any stupid ongoing bet or competition he’d only just been made aware of; it’s the simple fact that she’d laughed and he’d been the reason why that has his heart beating a little faster. The front of her foot’s knocked into his once or twice, but that's really about it as far as stumbling goes. “So far my foot’s survived.” Willie tilts up her chin a little more to look him in the eye, amusement glittering in impossibly dark irises.

“I think you might have a personal bias.” John grins, daring to guide her into a slow spin. She lets him.

“What gave me away?”

“Dunno. Just a hunch.” His arm, almost instinctively, wraps around her lower back instead of going to rest on her hip. Sometimes, he really does forget to think around her. This feels more natural than the hand on the small of her back, having her close like this. Even in the dim light he can make out that pretty flush to her cheeks and preens at the fact that he is the reason for it.

“Yeah well, biased or not, I think I’m an expert in the subject,” John declares, taking her in with this proximity. He’d walked her to her room last night and immediately his thoughts wandered to her getting ready in the morning. The domesticity of it. She always seemed to have every hair perfectly in place but he liked these moments where she’s flushed, where her hair’s frizzing a little bit from late summer humidity, where her cheeks are creased with a smile. “And my expert opinion is you make it look easy.”

“Oh I better not question the expert then,” Willie concedes, sarcasm lacing the words. She looks him over and John doesn’t miss how her eyes only dart to his lips for a second before meeting his gaze. “Anyone ever told you you’re a sweet talker?”

“Only my mom when I was a kid,” John counters. “So I think you might have a personal bias.” Willie scoffs quietly at how he’s turned her words on her, the roll to her eyes still filled with what he thinks, what he hopes, is mirth. She leans forward and John’s breath hitches in his throat the moment that her lips find his cheek, right by the corner of his mouth. She holds it there a moment, before drawing back and looking at him.

“Personal bias or not, you are.” Willie decides on, but she hasn’t exactly moved out of his space yet. John holds her gaze a moment, and everything else just falls away. It’s just his beating heart, and her starry eyes, and the kiss to his cheek and the lips that he hasn’t kissed since Regensburg.

If he’s a sweet talker, then he’s also an opportunist. John’s leaning in before he can question himself.

They fit together like two puzzle pieces. He could drown in the barely perceptible scent of her perfume. Her lips are soft against his own, returning his affection as her hand moves from his shoulder to lightly caress his jaw. He squeezes her hip, gentle still, eyes shut as he loses himself a moment and decides to just not think. He’s safe enough here, with her, to do that. She’s smiling against his lips for a moment and he feels like he’s been coaxed from a dream when they part.

“Should’ve done that last night,” he mutters. Willie hums.

“Mhm. Left me hanging. Wasn’t very nice of you.” It’s a tease, he knows it is, and he’s taking the bait anyway, brushing their noses, wanting to kiss her again.

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Promise?” And the way she says it has his heart pounding, his cheeks almost aching with a smile that just won’t falter. He chuckles to himself.

“Yeah, I promise,” he concedes, then leans in to kiss her again.

[hesbuckcompton-baby]

MOUSE HOLE CREW ; ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE - THE KILLERS

can we tell @latibvles's ocs have me in a chokehold. can we.

[latibvles]

literally no one asked for this. i, however, saw these pictures on Ben Radcliffe’s instagram and decided “you know what this fandom needs? Frat Boy John Brady.” So that’s what this is. And also another excuse to write Willie & Brady coupled with shenanigans that aren’t the horrors of war. i now know way too much about fraternities and sororities. special tag for @wexhappyxfew for seeing the vision. brady has now fallen victim to my “putting characters in places they got no business being in” just like Ron

—

John should’ve majored in the art of escape.

It was seamless — slipping away from the beer pong table, head half-swimming and just a little bit stumbly. Pretty much every room on the first floor was swathed in a smoke-laden haze; John figures that Dougie’s countless social media posts must have done the trick. Most people he’s run into are strangers to him. That, and with this being the first party of the year, the turnout was bound to be big. His head was just pounding, and he needed a place to sit that wouldn’t open up the invitation for a random stranger to inadvertently sit on him.

Omega Pi’s brothers and others only policy on the second floor is a blessing in that way. He just needed a solid fifteen minutes before Bucky could sniff him out like a bloodhound and drag him into something stupid. Last semester he’d somehow managed to persuade John into drinking way too much tequila directly from the bottle, and he still gets nauseous whenever someone mentions margaritas.

He’s pretty sure he heard Benny say something about a bottle of Patrón behind the bar and he isn’t sticking around to find out.

John climbs the stairs, a little wobbly-legged, still foggy-brained as he tries to guesstimate how long he’ll have until he’s hunted down by any variety of friends wondering “Where the hell Brady’s at?” He figures maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, and that fact imbues him to move a little bit quicker to his own door, admittedly fumbling with the knob as he makes his way inside — Dougie’s playlist immediately muffled once he shuts the door, and for that he’s thankful.

He reaches for one of his vinyls on the shelf and sets it on the record player, flicking the switch and setting the needle before throwing himself haphazardly onto the bed itself and shutting his eyes a moment. The sharp beginnings of a headache are beginning to take root behind his eyes as he lets them flutter shut a moment. Deep inhale, slow exhale, ears latching onto the smooth jazz of the vinyl as opposed to the muffled Future track that was shaking the walls of their esteemed house.

He just needed t—

Click.

John’s head snaps up upon hearing his door open and shut quickly. His brows furrow, taking in the mostly shapeless form with their back to him. A varsity jacket maybe two sizes too big swathed their frame, they had curly black hair that’d gone frizzy — presumably from the amount of people downstairs. John clenches his jaw, staving off the irritation forming. This was either Bucky sending someone up here to draw him out already, or the nighttime company of someone else who’d found the wrong room. Their shoulders seem to relax and they let out a small sigh, not yet noticing him.

John gives this person the benefit of the doubt and goes with the second option.

“Think you’ve got the wrong room,” he opens with a clearing of his throat. The person gasps, small and surprised, head whipping around to meet him and— oh.

Her eyes are big and brown, brows raised and lips parted for a moment. They stare at each other, wordless, and he’ll blame the fact that he’s kind of taken aback for the moment on the alcohol — taking her in. She has on one of those black corset tops and a pair of beat up white sneakers. He recognizes her, vaguely, having seen her come in with a group of girls from the sorority house down the street. Bucky knew them better than he did, but to be fair, Bucky knew everybody.

“Sorry I didn’t—” she presses herself back up against the door again, lips pressing into a line. “Was just looking for a quiet spot. You guys have uh… persistent party guests. I can— I can leave if—” she’s reaching for the doorknob and John’s sitting up, reaching like he’s going to cross the threshold to stop her from turning the knob.

“No. No, you can stay. I just thought you were—”

“Here to hook up?” His face heats up at her blunt delivery of it, and John coughs unceremoniously into his fist.

“...yeah, something like that.” She nods, her expression unreadable, the silence between them admittedly stiff. He’s sitting up more, as opposed to his prior position laid out sidelong on his bed, extending his hand and feeling almost dumb for doing so. “I’m… I’m John er— Brady. John Brady.” Jesus Christ, when did he ever trip over his words like this.

She takes it, shaking his hand and he can’t help but notice the callouses, the chipped manicure and blue stains on her fingers.

“I’ve heard.” His eyes widen at that.

“You’ve heard?” There seems to be a twitch at the corner of her lip, she looks from their hands back up to him.

“One of your friends… Ev? I think his name was? Was looking for a uh… Johnny with the Donny and I’m pretty sure you’re the only one hiding up here.” John doesn’t know whether to laugh or to hide his burning face in the pillows and try to stave off the tequila-induced PTSD he feels coming back in full force. He decides to snort quietly instead of further embarassing himself.

“Except for you.” She nods, squeezing his hand and then letting it go.

“Except for me.” John really wishes he were more sober for this, just so he’d stop getting caught up in long dark lashes and the pink dusting on her cheeks that he doesn’t know if it’s from makeup or from him. His half-inebriated brain hopes that it’s because of him. He almost misses her introduction. “I’m Willie.”

John smiles.

“That short for something?”

“Nothing worth repeating. Too many syllables.” She waves her hand dismissively, and he scoffs in amusement at how quick Willie is to dismiss it. He figures not to press this time.

“Alright. Hope you don’t mind jazz then. You can uh… sit wherever,” John welcomes, gesturing to his space. At least he could pride himself on keeping things neat in here — even if their kitchen would be sticky with spilled beer tomorrow and it’d take a good chunk of their Sunday to clean everything up. Willie makes her way over to his desk chair and plops down — it rolls with the force of her as she looks around his room with an innocent type of curiosity.

“You have… a lot of music,” she murmurs in a quiet sense of wonder — the kind that makes John feel warm down to the tips of his toes.

���It’s kinda my whole thing…” her eyes are drawn back to him and he feels suddenly shy. “Music Ed.”

“History,” Willie looks at the vinyls he has neatly stored on his shelf by the record player. “If I tell you I’ve never heard this song, are you going to kick me out?”

“You’ve never listened to Sade?” She smiles a little bit — this time he’s sure of it — still eyeing his vinyls, and shakes her head. “Well I won’t kick you out but I might not let you leave ‘till you can name three songs off the top of your head.”

“God, you’re one of those.”

“Oh absolutely. The worst kind,” he’s teasing now, and it’s landing because she’s laughing in a breathless kind of way, a way that sobers him up as if to ensure he could commit her to memory as she is now. And she’s, well… she’s beautiful, sitting at his desk chair, looking at the CD cases he’d put up on his walls at the start of the term. Effortlessly so. He’d make her laugh for the rest of the night in this space if it weren’t for the fickleness of his hiding spot. Her eyes fall onto him again and they look over him from his spot on the edge of the bed. Her gaze is piercing as they dart over the length of him with all the swiftness of a hummingbird, her fingers reaching up to mess with her bottom lip a moment. “I’m sure there’s probably worse.”

John raises his brows.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm, considering…” she gestures to the space around him. “I mean— there’re frats with worse reputations too. I just heard that Omega Pi’s—”

“Reckless?” She nods succinctly, with a half-hearted shrug.

“And that some of you go through girls like a mom in a Target clearance aisle,” John makes a noise that’s half between being strangled and laughing. “Guys too.” It takes him a minute to come back down to Earth after that one, rubbing at his face, halfway between embarrassment and amusement. Okay, she wasn’t wrong: his friends had a tendency to do some stupid shit, himself included, and while he in specific wasn’t hooking up with anyone with a pulse — he’s pretty sure that Dougie bought three boxes of condoms after move-in day. But they hadn’t done anything to get arrested and he’s pretty sure all the guys were, well, clean where it mattered.

“That’s just Dougie,” John offers, and she raises an inquisitive brow.

“And Bucky.”

“Christ, what’d he do?”

“Nothing, he just has the look to him.” Okay, that’s fair. “And he definitely stole my friend from me to play beer pong because he couldn’t find his partner.” John clicks his tongue at that.

“That might’ve been my fault.” Willie rises from her seat and he watches as she seems to mull it over for a moment, before crossing to actually sit next to him now. She’s so much closer than before — his lamp lights up some of her dark hair to make it look more brown, there’s a shimmer of faded highlighter on her cheeks and something inexplicably pretty about the mascara flakes dotting just below her eyes. He’d wipe them with his thumbs if she’d let him. He gives her a half-shrug. “Like I said, we’re both hiders.”

With the small laugh and bob of her head, he catches a whiff of her perfume. Something clean and a little citrusy, reminding him vaguely of springtime in spite of the autumn leaves changing outside.

“Well then it’s not all bad.” She decides on, sincerely. His knee bumps into hers and they exchange quiet smiles — the air significantly less stiff between them. Something warm sprouting between them and charged by the points where they connect. His pinky finds hers on the mattress, and in a brief move of boldness, he lets his hand overlap hers. Willie looks down, cheeks flushing as she looks back up at him.

She really is a vision, flustered like this.

She opens her mouth to speak but is immediately cut-off by Mambo No. 5 blaring — John knows that’s not his ringtone, and so he laughs in disbelief as Willie’s eyes widen.

“That’s— my friend Harrie set that I think. I—”

“It’s fine. Maybe you’re just a Lou Bega fan.”

“John—” she narrows her eyes and he thinks he might swat at her so he’s leaning back.

“Well don’t keep them waiting.”

She huffs, picking up the phone with a very flat “Hello?” but the voice on the other end is so loud that he can hear it clear as day.

“Where are you? Fern’s up on the table and I can’t get her down!” Willie looks at John, who’s hand is covering his own mouth to muffle his laughter, evident by his shaking shoulders. The exchange is quick: Willie’s words are flat, almost bewildered, and she’s batting at him as they talk before she hangs up the phone and looks at him with what he’s pretty sure is disappointment. He can’t say he’s not disappointed either.

“Guess I’ve been found. I can leave you here, tell them you passed out.” He shakes his head, standing up as she does, rubbing the nape of her neck.

“That’s never stopped them before and it won’t start now,” he admits, turning to switch off his record player, walking towards his door to get it for her. She walks past with quiet thanks and John watches for a few moments, admiring her departing figure before walking after her and descending back down the stairs into the chaos — the sound of his name on her scolding tongue looping over and over again in the back of his mind.

[latibvles]

bad boy, big fight.

who’s up for some character-introspectiony anger-fueled vivian savorre prose? everybody? great. some content warnings for viv talking about her dad being well . a general Piece of Human Garbage, also if pretty frank / vivid descriptions of blood aren’t your thing then u may wanna skip over this one (no clue if that counts as a “tw: WAR!! 🤓” tag but . this is heavy on the sensory stuff in consideration to how I write). Tagging @upontherisers & @hesbuckcompton-baby , who are victims of my frequent ramblings about viv’s daddy issues

—

i.

She’s blinking black spots from her vision when she comes to.

There’s blood on her knuckles. Blood in her mouth, too. Hot, sticky, vermillion stuff that sticks to her tongue and beads on her torn skin. Her face stings and she doesn’t need to pick her likely shattered compact from the ground to know she has scratches along her cheeks from the other girl’s well-manicured hand. The girl in question, who’s name she can’t remember, is laid out on the parking lot pavement.

Rarely does Vivian ever really feel like much more than prey. The feeling doesn’t ebb away even as she looms over the other girl. Blood’s pulsing in her ears too now, they’re ringing bad and even though the girl didn’t take a cheap shot at Vivian’s head, it feels like she did.

Her skirt is torn. Her stockings, too. And replacing the skirt is easy, with all the ones Ruth keeps in their shared closet. The stockings, not so much. Ruth’s four inches shorter than her, and heavier too, and these are the only pair Vivian’s got at the moment. She hopes her professor will forgive the runs, and if not she’ll just tell him she got into a bad scrap with a feral cat over the weekend.

Which, for all intents and purposes, isn’t a lie.

“Vivian,” a shake to her shoulder as the world comes back into color around her. “Viv, c’mon. We gotta go.” The other girl’s friends are going to help her up now and Vivian only now realizes how hard she’s breathing, the pain of her heart slamming against her fragile ribcage.

Still, there’s the urge there, to stamp her foot like a petulant child and remain in this empty lot. She started it. She started it! She kind of wonders when she’ll stop feeling like a little kid begging for someone to be her defender and today apparently isn’t that day. Vivian spits to the left, and the irony taste just reminds her that the blood from getting hit in the teeth and from biting her tongue tastes the same.

She furls and unfurls her fist to assess the damages there, winces at the slight sting, but some scabbing would be the worst of it. The only thing that old man was ever good for was showing her how to make a fist.

“Let’s go.” And the girl next to her, Grace, is tugging insistently as the other girl’s friends go to help her stand. When she turns her head to acknowledge her classmate, Grace’s lips are tugged into a frown. Brows furrowed. Muttering about Vivian’s scholarship and the trouble they’ll be in if this gets out. Maybe Grace’s hand tugging her doesn’t hurt much, but the words sting. She ducks her head slightly, keeps her gaze fixed on the tirade as she’s tugged off, feet dragging on the exit.

He started it. Not me. Believe me. Believe me.

She lets Grace drag her to her car. Lets her go on a tirade that’s both a condemnation of the other girl’s call but also of Vivian’s response — about how she needs to get a grip on it and can’t just “fly off the handle” like she does. And Vivian feels tiny and wrong in all the ways that matter, the draft from the rip in her skirt and stockings sending a shiver through her in spite of her boiling blood.

She swallows a lump in her throat, saying nothing.

Defending herself was an exhausting endeavor and more so defending herself from people who should’ve known her, should’ve been on her side. And maybe it’s her fault that she’s better at hiding who she is than her father is but the horror at watching the mask come off only serves to prove what Vivian already knows.

She’s her father’s kid. And she’s never been on his side either.

Her head hurts as she shifts her gaze towards the window, watching streetlights go by, trying to stamp out that kicked-dog feeling settling in the crevices of her aching chest before it can worsen and become something more intolerable. She hates feeling small but it’s all she’s ever been.

It’s past curfew when they get back, but it’s not Vivian’s first time sneaking back into the dorm. They part ways in the hallway, Grace’s eyes still trained on the scratches on her face that Viv will have to explain away in the morning. Feral cat. Angry dog. It stings but it’s not bleeding. Shame doesn’t subside so easily as pain does.

Ruth waited up for her, because of course she did.

She’s kind like that; kind in a way Vivian can really only pretend to be. She immediately goes to fret over the scrapes on Vivian’s knees, the scratches on her cheek, the runs in her stockings. Ruth doesn’t ask questions; she just reaches for the first aid kit they keep beneath her bed and Vivian does her best not to recoil from the sting as her roommate goes through the business of cleaning every scrape and cut in a way that she’s only now getting used to.

“Jesus, Viv, what are we gonna do with you?” Ruth’s voice is warm, teasing as she says it.

Vivian laughs and swallows down the brutally honest answer, the ‘get rid of me’ that would’ve otherwise slipped out without hesitation. Because asking to be believed is, evidently, too much to ask for. Maybe if she begged — but begging was one of maybe a handful of things that are beneath her. She’d tried begging before, and that just led to feeling humiliated on top of all the other feelings of shame her father was able to expertly reap from her for a time.

Get rid of me. It’s not much of a solution, but it’s the only one she’s got.

ii.

The blood in her mouth tastes the same in England as it did in Ann Arbor.

Which is to say, sticky and ironlike, albeit less strong; it came from biting her cheek this time. He didn’t get the chance to hit her before she’d socked him in the jaw. Maybe it was reluctance to hit her that kept it from being her fate; maybe he was scared about one of the other officers scurrying out here and catching her with a bruise to her cheek. She doesn’t recognize her own voice — which feels more like a snarl coming from her throat than a palpable, verbal threat.

“Try that again. I fucking dare you.”

The hand on her shoulder is a heavy weight, keeping her from taking the step. What she wants to do is start kicking him and maybe if red still clouded her vision, she might’ve. But it’s ice water on her burning hot skin; the squeeze there, the reminder that she’s not alone with one kind-of-friend in a parking lot.

Viv swallows hard, gaze snapping to her right. It’s Willie’s hand, because of course it is, and her expression is unreadable. And then from her peripherals she sees Carrie tucked into Jo’s side like a pup seeking out its mother. June’s glaring at the RAF officer like she might take a swing next and— oh God, fuck me.

It’s a clamor that Viv can’t register as her crew trickles out, and then the others. She can feel it already: the reprimand, the sting, the yank of her collar as she’s tied to the fence post because they just don’t know what to do with her. She rips her gaze from that open door, back to Willie, who’s still looking at her. Who heard and saw everything: the shot taken at their flying, the way he’d reached for Carrie and the comment about American girls being easier.

But is that ever enough? When has that ever mattered before? These are his fists and you’ve never once stood by them, have you?

There’s a lump in her throat that she forces herself to swallow, holding Willie’s gaze. Willie, who’s rational in a way Viv can only pretend to be. It’s what she’s best at: pretending. A conman raises a conwoman, an angry father makes an angry daughter. Willie knowing the extent of it doesn’t mean that Viv’s absolved of the indiscriminate shame that’s been rearing its ugly head since she was ten. The shame was her mother’s, well-worn and fitted to her exact proportions, growing with her as she aged. And yet, still—

He started it. Believe me. Believe me.

Her hand drops to Viv’s arm, squeezes it, then falls as the questions start pouring in. The what’d I misses and the what happens — and of course they’re posed at herself. Viv, who’s hand is still balled into its instinctual fist, who’s tongue feels like lead, who’s bracing herself for the scolding as the two Bucks look easily past her to the man being pulled onto his wobbling feet and then back to her and Willie.

“He wanted a taste of American girls,” Willie puts flatly with a clear of her throat. “So Viv gave him the free sample.”

Viv tries not to whip her head violently when she looks to Willie again, who’s staring at the two Majors. Bucky’s looking at her fist. It takes an exorbitant effort just to unclench that trembling thing, to look at her reddened knuckles with her usual casualness as though she’s not preparing to be turned away from. She nods in agreement to her co-pilot’s statement, jaw clenching and unclenching.

“He made a grab for Carrie. Couldn’t let that slide,” she manages. Carrie, who’s extent of boundaries being pushed by men  probably reached ponytail-tugging and maybe a flipped skirt. Bucky’s lip curls and Buck’s jaw clenches. But Viv looks to Willie still, whose hand has curled around her wrist where it hangs at her side. She squeezes it, gentle. Not tugging. Not scruffing her like a disobedient rescue. Believe me, believe me.

And then, another pleading voice clawing it’s way through her no-doubt pitiful expression.

Don’t make me beg.

“If it wasn’t Viv then it was gonna be me,” Willie finishes off, with an almost imperceptible nod of her head. Viv feels her heart leap into her throat. Willie looks at her, lips curling into a barely-there smile.

I do. I do.

[latibvles]

[patch ] sender carefully patches one of receiver's wounds

For Willie and Brady please.

take a walk. | willie & brady

my dear anon I think you and the other willie/Brady truthers (myself included) got more than we asked for but boy was it fun to write. here's willie & Brady in the moments after touching down in Africa

—

Willie’s ears are still ringing the moment she hits the ground. She thinks she hears Carrie retching, throwing up the remains of their last supper, and the air around them is stifling and suffocatingly hot.

She still isn’t quite breathing right and her ears are ringing, but they’re alive — bleeding a bit, battered and bruised, but alive.

Beside her, Viv is counting crews in a barely perceptible mumble, like she’s perched on the watch tower and didn’t just fly them to Africa. Willie screws her eyes shut, clings to the sound of Viv’s counting and tries not to hone in on Carrie’s shaky breathing or the clamor of crews trying to get their bearings. Try as she might to just breathe, to slow her heartbeat into something that doesn’t hurt as much, she comes up empty and shallow.

A hand splays out against the center of her spine and she nearly jumps at the contact, eyes snapping open and head whipping up from her crouched position almost violently. Viv gives her an apologetic smile, Jo Alden next to her, big gray eyes making no effort to hide their worry as she holds out her canteen and Willie takes it, scrutinizing it for a moment.

“Carrie’s got her own, if that’s what you’re worried about Lieutenant,” Jo offers. Willie lets out a small sigh and a nod, taking a sip from it and looks at Viv once more. Her brows are furrowed, looking all over her face and following the slope of her shoulders. Assessing her, in that way she does everyone in their group. Willie doesn’t even try to mask her tension.

“Why don’t you swing by the 418th? Veal asked me to go find Kidd but I want to make sure Carrie doesn’t hack up anything vital over there.” Take a minute, Willie, is what she actually means, take a walk. And if Willie didn’t know herself and know that she kind of needed it, then she’d fight her more on it.

But right now she’s kind of grateful for Viv’s uncanny ability to lie on the spot. She tries to hand Jo back the canteen, but she waves her hand with another smile of hers and a ‘keep it’ that Willie isn’t going to argue against, so she does — then heads off in the general direction Viv gestured to. All the while, the planes on the runway are kicking up dust and the clamoring here is somehow synonymous with the kind they’d hear in England. There’re a couple claps on the back, a couple shouts of her name. She counts the forts that she knows under her breath and gives nods of acknowledgement to those she spots, but little else.

It’s not England — but somehow her feet just know where to go and how to find him. Well, maybe not him, but she finds Hoerr, and Hambone, and the rest of his crew as they’re walking away from their fort. Hoerr nods at her in acknowledgement, lets the others keep walking as he slows to talk to her.

“Looking for Brady?” Straight to the point, Willie tries not to bristle at the fact that she’s apparently become transparent by now — at least by Hoerr’s standard.

“Kidd, actually.”

“Mm, well�� Johnny’s taking a minute in there, should be out by the time you find him. Welcome to Africa by the way.” He gestures to their fort and he gives her a smile after that. Willie mutters out her thanks as he passes her. Part of her just wants to bury her head in the sand like an ostrich, but instead she stares up at Paddlefoot’s Proxy like a kid waiting for Santa to drop down the chimney. Her chest isn’t hurting anymore, not like before, but she’s still restless. The exhaustion of having flown hasn’t hit her quite yet and maybe that’s just another side effect of being in Africa.

If Willie thinks on it long enough, she can pretend she’s back at Thorpe Abbotts and John’s just led his fort away from occupied France, getting a taste of flak before anyone else did. But he was fine that day, in one whole piece, and that’d been enough for her back then.

But she counts the seconds until the counting drives her half-mad. Maybe she was more patient before she actually started getting shot at. Willie figures she’s got two options, really. She can either be the idiot waiting by a fort that isn’t hers while everyone else is still in motion, or she can be the idiot climbing into a fort that isn’t hers because she’s growing impatient and antsy with every second spent waiting for him to drop down so she can see John Brady’s face and know, definitively, that he is okay.

Adrenaline and impulsivity win out. She’s hauling herself into the fort before she can second-guess it.

Willie doesn’t really know what she was expecting, entirely. She’d never been in his fort but they all tended to look the same upon the first glance. It’s full of holes casting their kaleidoscope of golden light onto the narrow walkway. Her eyes trace them like it’s a game of connect-the-dots, walking up and until they land on a bouncing knee, and hunched shoulders, and a rosary grasped tightly in two hands.

John’s hair is all strewn about, lip between his teeth — he doesn’t notice her until she clears her throat and when he does, there’s a soft form of surprise on his face that doesn’t meld with this battered fort and the blood on his temples.

“No rush, they haven’t brought out the beer yet,” Willie offers, “Could keep an eye out for you though.”

John lets out one of those breathy, half-hearted laughs of his and moves down on the narrow bench to make room, as if there were some invisible entity that he didn’t want to sandwich her against. Willie takes a couple steps and sits beside him. Their knees knock and his gaze is still fixed on the flak holes across from him. They’re silent for a couple moments — she focuses on his slow steady breathing and tries to mimic it.

“You see Biddick yet?” he asks after a moment. His voice is a little hoarse. Willie shakes her head.

“Saw Benny though.” It’s the most optimistic she’ll allow herself to be — if Benny made it then surely Curt did too. Made it somewhere, in any case. Tentatively, she reaches up to touch the scratches on his face, angry, red, and bleeding; they curve in the same shape of their helmets, and Willie’s pretty sure she’s already got a couple scars from the helmet and the mask, but she asks anyway: “How’d you get this?”

He turns his head fully to look at her, and Willie thinks her heart might start pounding again.

“Helmet too tight and bad turbulence,” she rolls her eyes at his quick remark.

“Do you have rags?” His brows furrow.

“By the radio, I think, why?” Impulsively, Willie drags her thumb across his cheekbone before she rises to her feet and crosses by him. She pokes her head into the radioroom, sure enough finding a couple rags jammed between the radio and the curve of the wall. She looks back at John, who’s still giving her a weird look, then reaches for the canteen she’d slung over her side and shakes it.

“For the scratches.” He shakes his head a little bit as she makes her way back to him.

“You don’t have to do that.” Willie shrugs.

“I want to. Do… you not want me to?” His eyes widen a little bit and he shakes his head a bit.

“That’s not what I meant I just… didn’t want to give you the hassle.” Willie unscrews the cap and wets the rag, squeezing it and then looking up at him as the excess water runs beneath her sleeve. The air in here’s hot already, so she doesn’t mind it.

“You’re not a hassle,” Willie puts it plainly, sliding forward a bit more. John leans towards her, and the gesture alone has her taking her lip between her teeth, praying her free hand doesn’t tremble as she tilts his chin to get a better look. There’s a selfish part of her that wants to take her time with this, drinking in the sight of his eyes and parted lips. The next words are tumbling from her mouth before she can stop them. “I like doing things for you.”

His lips curl into a smile, and she’s pretty sure there’s a flush creeping up her neck.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?” She fixes him with a narrow-eyed look, but he’s just looking at her with that familiar myrth that knocks the wind out of her when she’s more grounded. She couldn’t deny that part anymore even if she never knew how to handle the way he looks at her, what she was supposed to do with that. Willie rolls her eyes and shakes her head, goes to wipe the dried blood from the side of his face and he hardly even flinches — he just lets out a soft exhale of a laugh. They’re quiet for a few moments before he simply fills it with a “Me too,” that has Willie pausing in her movements, before continuing.

She isn’t quite sure if it’s hot in here from her own flush, the heat festering within the walls, or because of whatever charged air there is between them. Probably a culmination of all three, which has her huffing under her breath in mild frustration, and John gives her a raised brow.

“No one told me it was hot in Africa,” Willie laments sarcastically.

“It’s no Pennsylvania,” he offers. She can’t help her smile as she looks at him again.

“Or New York.” He’s smiling too — and Willie wonders if they’ve maybe gone a little insane to be smiling at all right now. But she’ll stop questioning it, taking it in greedily like she does every feeling he elicits from her. “Bad snow?”

“The worst. We’d shovel for hours.”

“You could have the whole family out there and you wouldn’t make a dent.” Talking about home doesn’t hurt with John. A lot of the guys really started avoiding that topic more often — it’s hard to talk about it without thinking of all the people who won’t get to go home after all this. It lingers in the back of her mind like a shadow in her periphery, but he has a way of chasing the ghosts out for a little while. She doesn’t think of that; she thinks of her mother demanding to meet the “musician” and Willie having to reiterate that it’s not like that.

With her hand on his face like this, up close like this, she wonders if she might’ve been lying about that part in her letters. She tilts his head to the other side to get the other set of scratches — the sun leaking through the flak holes lights up his eyes in a way that makes it impossible not to stare.

“I had a weird thought, when we were up there,” John admits, and it’s her turn to raise a brow. “Think it was… after the first round of fighters,” he looks at her pointedly now, in that way that makes her feel like he’s seeing through her and reading her like an open book. “I realized that you never told me what Willie’s short for. Couldn’t even make my best guess. It bothered me for a solid five minutes.”

There’s something about that statement that makes her swallow hard. The unspoken things behind it — we were in the air, and I was thinking of you. We’d just been hit with flak and fighters and I wanted to know your name. We could’ve gone down, and my thoughts would’ve been about you, and what I still don’t know about you. Now she knows it with certainty: the air is electric with the weight of his admittance and her heart is certainly pounding once more, but for a better reason.

“Wilhelmina,” She says.

“Wilhelmina?” He parrots.

“Yeah. Mouthful, isn’t it?” Willie gives John a lopsided smile, eyes flitting to the blood she’d wiped from the side of his face, pink scrapes against flushed skin. Better now. But his jaw clenches and she hasn’t moved out of his space quite yet.

“I like it,” John counters in a way that’s defensive, like he’s gotta defend the sound of her own name from herself. I could’ve died wondering what that was, so don’t tell me it’s a mouthful. To his credit: he’d said her name so curiously, like it was some type of wonder to behold. Still, Willie’s brows furrow, and he doubles down. “I like Wilhelmina.”

He is stubborn, and adamant, and frank about it. Like it’s all so simple and not something to argue against, because he won’t be changing his mind on this. He likes Wilhelmina, and that’s the end of that.

And Willie is tilting his head again to look at her, and kissing him with just as much certainty.

His lips are chapped and his whole body is shuddering in her hands before his own find her hips and pull her closer to him. His lips are warm, his hair weaves easily between her fingers. Their noses are bumping clumsily but she can’t find it in herself to care for those few moments where it’s just John’s lips seeking out hers, and John’s hands squeezing at her hips to the point where she makes a pleased noise, reflexively, against his mouth.

By the time they part, she’s breathless, chest heaving against his.

John’s staring at her, lips parted, face lit up by the setting sun forcing its way through flak holes and Willie can’t help but find him beautiful like this — face speckled in golden dots, boyish expression all riddled with disbelief. Her heart is pounding in her ears. John Brady don’t you get it? I’ve wanted to do that since Sioux City.

“When we get back to England,” his lips are brushing against hers salaciously on every word, his fingers digging into her hips like she’ll be swept away by desert wind. “I’m using my pass, and we’re going on three whole dates. Real ones.” 

“Three whole ones? Not a half of one?” He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners and Willie can’t help it: she’s smiling too.

“Three whole ones, Wilhelmina.” He insists, and before she can give him a witty reply, he’s leaning forward to crush her in another decisive, needy kiss.

[latibvles]

❛ i’ve been thinking about you all day. ❜

For Willie and Brady please!

settled.

CERTIFIED MUNCH JOHN BRADY WHO ELSE CHEERED!! this is adults doing adult things under the cut. postwar willie & brady just hit different for some reason. this is nsfw. you've all been warned.

There is no better feeling than this — hands in his hair, breathy sighs against his mouth, John’s hands moving lower, lower, until they’re smoothing against the swell of her ass, squeezing enough for a small giggle to vibrate against his lips. He loves that sound. Loves her. Loves this.

He’s pressing her up against the arm of the couch and she’s tugging at his tie until she can pull it off and let it fall to the floor. This goddamn couch. He’s hoisting her up by the thighs only to settle her back down against its cushions and marvel at her a moment.

It’d been his realization this morning. No more movers, or plumbers, or repairmen. No more furniture to buy or things needed to make this place a home. No more job interviews and looming rejection anxiety.

They were settled. Him and Willie. They’d been married for months but now it felt like they really were and he’s a bit amazed that they got to this point. She’s looking up at him, and he knows they’re both a mess — wrinkled shirts and messy hair and kiss bitten lips.

He doesn’t care. He’s leaning down to crush his lips against hers again and she’s arching her back until their fronts are pressed together. His hand finds her breast, squeezing until he’s fumbling with her blouse buttons and untucking it from the skirt and letting his fingers graze against the delicate lace of her brassiere. He shifts his head, nosing against her neck to inhale the faded scent of her perfume mingled with the smell of old books.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he murmurs against her skin, presses a kiss there and Willie lets out a steady exhale.

“Good work day?” she asks, and just hearing the smile in her voice has him smiling too, dragging his nose up her neck to press a kiss to her jaw, lightly nipping at her ear to make her shiver.

“Mhm, really good,” He’s leaning back then on his haunches, hands hooking into the sides of her skirt to tug, to drink her in. He could bunch the garment around her waist but he doesn’t want to.

They have time now, there’re no movers. No repairmen. And he likes this view of her — flush-cheeked, chest rising and falling, her eyes trained on him. Dark gaze piercing and curious. Typically this would be the part where he’d tease her, make her lay out what she wants in the plainest terms until she’s bright red and grabbing at him. But he’s feeling kind this time, or needy, the line’s blurry and he doesn’t care to dissect it much as her skirt slides off her legs.

“Christ, look at you,” John swears. “Sight for sore eyes, Mrs. Brady.” He drinks in the sight of her blush intensifying.

“John,” Willie huffs out, an arm going over her eyes, the other draped across her middle. He knows what she’s covering up almost instinctually and doesn’t resist when he moves her arms, looming over her to trail kisses from her forehead, nose, lips, down further.

“What? It’s true,” he murmurs against her skin, tongue poking out to trace the divots of her skin; the column of her throat and dips in her collarbones, blunt canine brushing against bone and John tries to withhold the urge to leave a mark where everyone can see it.

“You’re ridiculous,” she giggles, the sound vibrating against him, coupled with a sigh as he kisses at the softness of the tops of her breasts, and then the peaks of them through her brassiere.

“And you’re gorgeous. We can keep stating the obvious if you want,” John offers, as he stalls by the shrapnel scar she’d been covering along her ribs.

He doesn’t know if there are enough words to convey that simple fact: if there is anything in the world he won’t flinch away from, it’s her, so the least he can do is show it. He presses a kiss against pink scar tissue, drags his tongue along its jagged edges and grins at the soft exhale of “John” that tumbles from Willie’s lips. He loves dissecting all the different inflections of the way she says his name, the pitch and breathiness of it — what it means when she says just one to two words.

Lower, lower, he’s lathing kisses down her stomach, her thighs, until his mouth hovers over the apex of them and she’s groping for his hand to lace their fingers and squeeze, pressing it right between her breasts — her heart hammering against the back of his hand.

John kisses her once through the flimsy fabric, grunting at the suppressed sweetness of her before he’s pulling her underwear off with the free hand and bowing his head to taste her in full.

Willie whines, breathless and pitchy as he runs his tongue up and down, circling her bundle of nerves, and then her entrance. Her praises are soft whispers that squeeze at his heart while making him impossibly harder through his slacks. The line between pain and pleasure blurs — he involuntarily ruts his hips against the cushions when her free hand finds his hair and tugs, seeking some form of friction.

There’s a sting there that spurs him forward — nails digging into his hand, tugging his hair. His tongue is working inside her with practiced precision, nose nuzzling at the special bud that has her moaning into the quiet of the living room. Their living room. Their house. He’s grinning against her, looking up at her to drink in the sight of her head tilted back and her eyes screwed shut as she squeezes his hand like a lifeline.

“C’mon Mrs. Brady. Eyes on me,” he coos against her wetness, and Willie takes in a trembling breath before forcing her eyes open to look at him. He chuckles and the sound has one of her feet digging into his shoulder blade. “There she is. Eyes on me.” A kiss to her inner thigh, one where he bites hard enough to leave a mark and elicit another whimper from her before refocusing on that bundle of nerves. He circles it with his tongue — quick, precise movements before he’s sucking it into her mouth.

“John I— Christ I can’t— I need—” she’s stumbling over her words, breathy and trying, clearly, to keep watch of him. Trying not to completely shut her thighs around his head. He wouldn’t be opposed. There’s an ache there from how hard she’s pulling and squeezing and he just grazes his teeth against that bud, just enough to get her back to arch deliciously off their couch cushions and for her to press his head impossibly closer.

“I’ve got you, honey. Promise,” John grunts out through his minstrations.

“I’m gonna—”

“I know. I know.” He doesn’t know if it’s his encouragement or the vibrations of his voice or what that sends her over the edge, but she’s spilling onto his tongue, his chin, and he groans at the taste of her as she relaxes a moment. He presses another kiss to her thigh as she comes down from the high, and then Willie’s eyes zero in on him with some sort of indiscernable newfound determination. She’s reaching for him before he can even pull himself up properly.

“Come here, Mr. Brady,” she huffs, and John is more than happy to open his mouth to her when she pulls his face towards her to kiss him again.

[latibvles]

a kiss to prove you don’t have feelings for them

For Willie and Brady? If you could.

I love them and want nothing but happiness for them…, but also I’m a sucker for angsty steamy scenes.

A KISS CAN JUST BE A KISS.

hi anon friend! as much as i would really love to try and work this into mainverse ( because im evil and love giving them problems ) Brady is . unfortunately (?) extremely aware of his own feelings as is the entire 100th except for Willie for a little while. you know who isn't as aware of his painfully obvious crush on Willie? Slightly Dumb College Frat Boy Brady. So this ended up taking a turn into Frat Boy AU. I hope you don't mind! I did have fun writing this ♡ I had to make an entire side character because I cannot for the life of me imagine one of Brady's own friends instigating this heavily in his love life

—

The house was busy — but with the October chill setting in, the backyard was a bit quieter. Still, they’d made a run for firewood today in anticipation, which was a good call on Jack’s part. It’s a welcome warmth, putting up an effortless fight against the chilly air, and they’re sitting all around it. Them, being himself, Willie to his left and Benny to his right, and then a couple others: some of the people here, he’s only just learned the names of.

Helen was a hospitality major, but he knew her boyfriend, Nash. He and Rosie were pledges living at the dorm, and the latter had an English class with Harry last semester. Her friend Tatty sat to the right of her, next to some guy he didn’t know all that well, but presumably went to school with (he’s pretty sure it’s Charlie), and the girl next to him, he recognized from a previous party, was Naomi. He’d also caught Dougie slipping her out of his room the next day — and she’d just smiled and waved at him as he groggily padded his way into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal.

“Alright Benny, your turn, truth or dare?”

The game was Naomi’s idea. John was just fine sitting there, leaned over and talking to Willie about nonspecific things. Since that first party they’d formed something of a friendship: formed mostly through iMessage games and playlist exchanges. Once he’d started seeing her he couldn’t really stop — whether that was on campus or at a house party, or her taking a cat nap in his room while he studied. Not that he minded. He liked talking to her, liked making her laugh, indulging in her comfortable silences. But Benny agreed and so he ended up doing so, and then Willie, too.

“Dare.” Really, it was less like truth or dare and more like Truth, Dare, or Drink. Benny’s lips curl in a smile as Charlie hums, running his finger over his lips.

“Kiss the least attractive person in the circle.”

“Yeesh, trying to get me in trouble, are you?” Benny leans back, eyes darting around the circle and Charlie looks smug enough. John watches as Benny’s eyes dart briefly to the door and sneaks a look himself. It’s not hard to spot the blonde he’s eyeing — has been eyeing since the start of the semester — who looks over at them. Or rather, at Benny, John’s pretty sure he may as well be transparent at the moment.

Benny leans back in the chair, finishes off the drink in his solo cup. One of Hambone’s ungodly concoctions that John is pretty sure is just straight up Tito’s with jolly ranchers or something dissolved in there for flavor. He coughs once, twice, then looks at John.

“Sorry. Didn’t want to hurt your feelings there.” John scoffs, with a roll of his eyes.

“Yeah, you’re really breaking my heart over here,” he counters dryly. Benny rises from his lawn chair with a promise to be right back — heading off to get another drink from inside. Willie laughs, quietly, watching him go and John looks her up and down. Viv’s jacket draped over her shoulders and denim-clad legs pulled in, curled up on the lawn chair.

“They’re hopeless,” she remarks quietly, looking back over at him. They smile at one another and John wipes at his nose.

“They’re something, alright.”

Naomi clears her throat, clasping her hands together.

“Right then. John, truth or dare!” 

“Truth.” She blows a raspberry at that, seemingly deflating before perking up again all at once, then takes a look around their circle.

“Ever hooked up with someone in this circle?” She asks, with a glint to her eye that makes John shift in his seat a bit. He shakes his head immediately.

“Can’t say I have.”

“I oughta make you drink for that,” she huffs, and John raises a curious brow. “It’s no fun if you lie.” Naomi isn’t looking at him. She’s looking just to his left, to Willie, and he looks at her too. Her cheeks are flushing and her brows are furrowed in confusion. “Oh don’t give me that look — I heard you spent like an hour in his room last month.”

“I was hiding,” Willie says flatly. “And it was more like twenty minutes.”

“It’s not like that.” John tacks on at the end.

He blames that twisting feeling in his stomach on the alcohol and not the indifference of her statement, how quick she is to say it and how quick he is to tack that part on at the end. Naomi’s eyebrows raise and he doesn’t like the look of it, but she hums out an “Oookay!” and sips from her cup absentmindedly.

The game continues. A couple more rounds. Helen and Charlie end up switching shirts on a dare, Benny returns and snickers about not letting Nash see that. John drinks when Tatty gives him a dare because he’s not sitting in the October cold in his boxers and shirt until his next round. Benny ends up telling the story about how Meatball knocked the door open while Dougie had a girl over and stole his pants. He feels a little warm and makes a note to ask Hambone just what the hell this concoction’s made of.

“Jooooooohn,” Naomi hums, looking at him. “Truth or dare?”

Maybe it’s the mystery drink making him feel a little bolder. He sits up in his chair.

“Dare.” Benny raises his brows in quiet surprise. On the other end of the firepit, Tatty chuckles, sitting criss-cross, or something like it.

Naomi grins. John doubts his choice for a millisecond. And it’s warranted, because she glances from Willie back to him.

“Kiss Willie.” John scoffs.

“What are we, twelve?” He looks to Willie, who just draws her knees closer to her chest. Naomi whines.

“Oh come on. It’s a real easy one, isn’t it?” She leans forward on her knees, and the firelight makes her look like some sinister storyteller. “You said it yourselves. It’s not even like that, so who cares?”

Something about the way she says it outright rubs John the wrong way. He already knows that she isn’t convinced that he and Willie are just friends. It feels like a challenge — and he’s really backed himself into a corner. He can either drink and prove her point, or do the stupid dare and… disprove it. Or prove it. Honestly, he doesn’t even know. He looks again to Willie, who’s expression is unreadable — and he usually really likes her quiet, contemplative silence, but right now he really needs her to say something. Anything.

Willie looks at him and her brows furrow.

“Why’re you staring at me?” She asks. He fights the urge to smack his hand to his forehead.

“Are you fine with this?” he asks, genuinely meaning it. He sees the hesitation flash across her face before she shrugs, unraveling herself and letting her feet hit the grass, hands gripping her knees. She’s staring off, not looking at him, or Naomi, or anything really.

“Sure,” she acquiesces, “Prove your… your point, I guess.” John feels his mouth go dry, and not just from the alcohol. His palms are sweaty and he has to try really hard not to balk at how casual she’s being about the whole thing. Or wonder if he should start taking notes from her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, John,” Willie looks at him and there’s a slight edge to her voice. Insistence, maybe, or something like it. She’s never gotten impatient with him before. “It’s fine.”

John breathes out as she shifts her lawn chair until they’re bumping knees. He nods to himself once. Naomi looks decidedly pleased with herself, and so he shoots her a pointed glare, before turning to look at her. Willie’s already kind of leaning on her knees, looking at him and he can’t tell, even for a moment, how she might actually be feeling about this whole thing. Probably annoyed at John’s voiced protests instead of just getting it over with quick.

John turns, angling himself so he’s leaning towards her, into her space. She’s stiff as a board, her jaw clenched when it first comes into contact with his hand as he reaches for her. He sweeps a thumb over her cheek and it relaxes for a moment. She shuts her eyes and for a second John wonders if she’s bracing for impact or something. Her lashes are long. Dark. Pretty. She’s always pretty.

He’s surrounded by the scent of her; that soft citrusy perfume enveloping him, her dark curls tickling his hand where it’s tilting her jaw up a little. He’s leaning down to kiss her before he can think too hard on it, doubt it. It doesn’t have to be anything. A kiss can just be a kiss.

…right?

He means for it to only be a peck — a barely there bump of their lips. But hers are… soft, warm, they taste like the canned vodka seltzer she’d snuck from their basement fridge as opposed to the watery beer and strange half-assed concoctions they were offering en masse to the other guests.

There is an urge there, to deepen this, to taste and to hold her. A thought that crossed his mind so blatantly once before, when he’d first met her. Otherwise he thought he’d pushed that aside, buried it.

He’s grateful for her friendship. Wants to keep it, because it’s simple and because it was— is, easy to exist with her. Willie’s beautiful and funny and honest with him in a way he appreciates. He doesn’t want to lose that. Fuck it up with feelings that go beyond that — not wanting to demand more of her than what she ever wanted to give him. Her friendship’s precious and he’s lucky to have it; he knows that.

And here he is wanting to pull her into his lap and forget that this is supposed to be a part of a game. Wanting to press his tongue against her teeth.

His heart’s in his throat. A kiss can just be a kiss. He isn’t sure how much he believes that.

Willie breathes out against his lips, a soft, nearly mute “fuck” fanning across his face as they pull away from each other. His entire face feels flushed and he can’t bring himself to move away from the space between them. It was… charged with something. Energy between them that’s just downright impossible to ignore.

John stares at her, hardly moving from the space between them. Her expression’s unreadable for a few moments, holding his gaze with those piercing dark eyes of hers.

Her brows furrow, and she frowns. Willie leans away and turns her head from him.

“I’m… gonna go inside. S’cold,” she breathes out, standing up and walking away from before John can so much as rise with her and ask her to stay. Or ask to go with her.

It’s damning. All of it. The kiss, the way she looked at him, the way she walked away. His heart is sinking into his stomach. He wants to chase after her like some little kid but he somehow knows that that would be his second mistake.

[latibvles]

something to write about.

we are back with another one of these!! yay!! this week's prompt is recuperation — and so we're tackling willie and some post-bremen dilemmas, featuring John Brady no this isn't just an excuse for me to write them who said that? anyways im fond of them and this and I hope you are too :) me? posting at a reasonable time? unheard of.

It was almost offputting, how a phrase could change meaning in a little over 72 hours. Nothing to write home about becomes nothing you can write home about. Willie always struggled with writing letters, and Viv often teased her about how she’s the only person in the Hundredth who could struggle with making piloting sound exciting. Of course, Willie didn’t want it to sound exciting, even if she could manage that. She didn’t need Otto getting any wise ideas to end up on the fast track for enlistment. But now, there was nothing she could write home about.

Thirty people, gone, just like that. It was hard to be optimistic when there were no chutes to give some scrap of hope — and Willie hated watching June wipe Carrie’s blood from her hands almost as much as she hated watching Carrie get carried away on a stretcher, her collarbone a bloody mess haphazardly subdued with the sulfa powder and rag June held to it until she had to drop their bombs in the channel. They only knew how upset she was about the whole thing after she kicked her footlocker like it’d personally wronged her after interrogation.

If this is what it feels like being the last man standing, Willie hates it most of all.

That was three days ago, and now most of Mouse Hole’s flak holes were all patched up, and Willie’s certain that if she hopped into it right now, there would be no blood on that bombsight, no remnant of the fact that Bremen, in plain terms, had been a failure.

But that was nothing she could write home about, now was it?

She couldn’t tell home about the dead or about the hole torn through a nineteen-year-old girl. She couldn’t tell them about the flak or watching three planes go down or the engine fire. She couldn’t tell them that ten women she’d considered friends were gone, just like that — no funeral, no fanfare. She just had to live with it, like they all did, even if she still couldn’t make sense of what she’d seen and much less make sense of the fact that she’d have to witness it again.

“Willie?”

The sound of her own name catches her offguard — she wants to kick herself for the reflexive jolt her body makes at being caught offguard. But she turns her head and there’s John Brady, looking apologetic for startling her.

And that fact really makes her want to kick herself.

“Hey,” she breathes out, then inwardly cringes at her own lackluster response. Real smooth, Willie.

“Hi,” That makes it better. He walks closer still, nods, and Willie looks over the details of his face quickly. Furrowed brows and a bit of a tight lip — he’d given them that same look when they came out of interrogation. 418th. The first group grounded, huh. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Could ask you the same thing.” She counters, brows raising. This, however, makes him nod, the frown cracking a little bit. Good enough.

“I asked you first.” Willie clicks her tongue in mock surrender, then gestures to Mouse Hole — the Mickey Mouse decal grinning down at the two of them like a flak-happy lunatic — then gives him a half-shrug.

“Came to check on my house,” she explains, a statement that chips away at the rest of that tight-lipped frown and makes him smile a little bit. Much better. “Thought I’d catch Swanson out here or something. Wanted to ask a couple questions but now I guess I’m just having a staring contest with Mickey Mouse.” His brows shoot up towards his hairline and he chuckles.

“Oh yeah? Who’s winning?”

“Me, obviously. I don’t lose,” He makes a noise that she’s pretty sure, or rather, hopes, is a laugh — based on how the corners of his eyes crinkle a little, how he ducks his head down for a moment to rub the nape of his neck with a quiet muttering of ‘of course.’ Then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, tilts his head up to also, presumably, try his luck against the flak-happy mouse. He’s pretty bad at it though, because he glances at her again out of the corner of his eye.

“Where’s Viv?” Viv and Willie. Willie and Viv. Wherever one goes the other trails. Willie reaches up to rub at her earlobe a bit.

“Fifteen minutes behind me, probably. Or keeping the rest of them out of trouble,” Because that’s how it’s probably gonna be — she’s gonna make sure no girl walks home alone in the dark and I’m gonna sit and grumble until we make piss-poor jokes about it, just like we did over smaller things in Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska, too. “She’ll end up at the club one way or another.”

Brady nods, giving little more than an understanding ‘Ah’ and there’s a moment there where they lapse into something of a familiar quiet.

This, funnily enough, is the most normal she’s felt in days. She couldn’t really shake that restlessness that settled in after interrogation — a loud, harping feeling that she should be doing something. Which is at least half the reason that she came out here to begin with — to do something, maybe find something worth writing about on the hard-stands. I could tell them about Sandy Swanson and her crew of mechanics, or…

She looks Brady up and down for a moment. There was something assuring in knowing he didn’t seem off-put by her silence, that he was fine with sitting in it instead of prying words out of her that she couldn’t give. But words always came easier to her when she was comfortable anyway. And when it came to comfortable…

“You played well, last night,” Willie shoves her hands into her pockets. You always do. He raises a brow, his smile turning lopsided and boyish in a way Willie thinks she likes more than she reasonably so.

“You think so?”

“Well I’m no expert on the subject, but yeah,” Willie nods, affirming her own statement. “I do.”

There’s a look shared between them, and Willie feels that shyness starts to overtake her as it so often does when it comes to him. There’s the urge there, to say more: to show how much attention she pays to him when he picks up his instrument. There’s also the acute awareness that anything she says she’ll have to live with after saying it, and so she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something too bold.

It doesn’t change the fact that he’d quickly earned a soft spot with her, whether he meant to or not. Maybe that was something she could write about.

…Not the soft spot— the band. The music. She hadn’t really talked about that part much, beyond that there is a band, and there is music; jazz most nights, meant to provide them with some means of relaxation day in and out. There are words the more she thinks on it, waiting to be phrased in the right way to statiate the needs of both her worrying mother and her too-curious little brother. If there’s a few sentences in there about an unnamed saxophonist being, in her eyes, maybe a little bit better than the rest — then it’s a good thing she censors her own mail.

She reaches up to pat the body of her fort twice, takes a couple steps back and gives him a once over.

“I’m gonna head over now, I think. So I don’t make the missus wait on me,” there’s a snort there that’s so uncharacteristically Brady, and yet somehow he makes it work.

“Right, okay. I’ll walk you.”

“Think I can’t handle myself, Brady?” He clicks his tongue, turning as she walks past to keep step with her. He mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t quite catch, then continues to look at her as they walk.

“You caught me. I’m trying to keep you from dancing on tables.”

“Damn, there goes my weekend plans.”

Laughing is a shared sound, his deep chuckle overlapping with her breathy one, and she likes the combination. They lapse into that quiet again, the comfortable kind that feels normal when everything else doesn’t. Willie says nothing of the fact that their shoulders bump every now and again — if this is as much of a reprieve as she’s getting, then she’s more than happy. She’s never been a greedy type, but she could start to be if it meant there would be more of this. She steals a momentary glance at him, before committing wholly to it with a clearing of her throat as they get closer to the long rows of huts that line the path to the Officer’s Club.

“You never answered my question,” Willie points out, and Brady responds with little more than another ‘hm?’ “I asked what you were doing out there, you never answered.”

Brady’s brows raise to his hairline and he nods slowly before looking away from her, tongue poking out to run over his lips for what feels like a full minute before he looks back at her with that boyish smile of his again. There’s that brief, fleeting thought that recuperation looks less like the shine of brassy instruments and more like the warm, welcoming glint in those gray-blue eyes of his. If nothing else, he’s serving as a pretty great reminder that she is not, in fact, the last man standing.

“Heard there was a mouse running around by the hard stands, wanted to make sure she wasn’t scurrying into any of the forts and trying to take off,” The smile on his face gets a little wider with every word. Willie can’t help it — she laughs a little louder than before, shaking her head, half-disbelieving and yet surprised all the same that she couldn’t come to that conclusion on her own.

“Seriously? Did Viv put you up to that?” She asks, not upset at all, but Viv had a tendency to worry so Willie wouldn’t be especially surprised if she had.

It’s the barely there shake of his head, ‘no’ that almost knocks the wind from her lungs, and even if she doesn’t write this part down: Willie knows her mind will return to this fact often. And she won’t be able to hide her smile when it does.

[latibvles]

Hi. Could you possible write [ admire ] sender stares at receiver across a room, silently admiring and appreciating them from afar for Brady and Willie.

Thank you.

admire.

thank you for the request, friend! this was a lot of fun and my first time writing from Brady's perspective, so I can't promise that it's like... peak Brady pov, but I definitely had a lot of fun writing it!! More Willie/Brady today :)

The bar is buzzing with activity — music and games and loud conversation all becoming something of a symphony. Crank and Blakely are ordering their side of the bar a round, DeMarco’s right next to him, their elbows bumping up against one another’s with every minor movement. It’s crowded tonight, which is to be expected, considering it’s Saturday. Remedial training was no joke and for the first week, no one was able to go out on pass. So the beer Crank slides him is hard-earned, all things considered. Twenty-hour days all amounted to at least a couple days’ break.

They weren’t the only ones happy for the break.

“Guess they let the broads out again,” Crank’s co-pilot, Graham, observes, then gestures down the bar. Sure enough, they were just short of taking over that side and a table, too. The thirty women that made up the 100th’s three all-women bombers were somehow elusive and able to draw the attention of at least half the room by simply existing with wings on their jackets and the gleaming pins that designated some of them as officers.

A few of the men still took strong issue with women being here, flying “their planes” instead of sticking to their typewriters and coffee pots. John decided that his opinion didn’t matter much when all three crews made it to California while their own CO was somewhere in Las Vegas. Out with Alkire, in with Colonel Turner, who’s opinion on the whole thing seemed fairly resolute: you boys got a problem with it? Take it up with Roosevelt.

“At least they’re pretty,” Charles Via, Blakely’s co-pilot, remarks. John follows the direction of his stare to one of the blonde ones standing — the shorter one with her hair in some type of crown braid. Next to him, Benny starts snickering inexplicably and takes a swig from his drink.

John hadn’t learned all their names quite yet. He knew the pilots: Savorre, Rivera, Harris, but it wasn’t like he or anybody else had much energy at the end of the day. The rigorousness of their practice exercises left little room for an Officers’ Mixer or whatever ideas they might’ve had to get everybody acquainted. He’d learn the crews’ names eventually.

“Don’t bother. You haven’t heard what she did to Cheffo over in 351st?” There’s a pause, notable silence on their end. “She swung on him. Damn near knocked his tooth out, waiting for the bus. That right, Benny?” Crank points out. Next to him, Benny laughs a little bit and gives a half-shrug.

“I dunno if he lost any teeth but I saw him land flat on his ass. Scared me straight, that’s for sure.”

“That’s how he got that shiner? He told me he got that in a bar fight.” Blakely’s brows furrow, ruffled by the apparent lie Cheffo’s been telling. Benny laughs.

“Kind of, he just didn’t make it to the bar.” Benny offers. John can’t help himself.

“Or the fight.” John adds on, joining in on the small bout of laughter that follows as they clink their beers together and continue on with conversation. John’s fingers tap idly against the polished wood to the beat of the music and — in spite of himself — his eyes land back on that spot at the other end of the bar.

He recognizes Savorre with ease, her hair thrown up into a ponytail, her smile bright and effortless as she talks animatedly to the other pilot, Rivera who matches her quickness with ease. He can’t really make heads or tails of what might be going on over there — but he watches another woman, this one red-haired, rise from the table, arm-in-arm with the taller blonde, and they take their leave towards the other end of the room that has a vacant pool table.

“Savorre! Come take this round!” Egan’s voice, loud and gravelly, cuts through the din and has Savorre turning her head sharply. The grin on her face is toothy, and she raises a hand.

“You want me to take it then walk it over, Egan!”

“How the hell’d he manage that?” Via huffs, nose scrunching.

“Who, Bucky?”

“No, Ev, Cheffo. Yes, Bucky,” Via snarks as the man makes his way over with three shot glasses. He’s greeted with a couple amused smiles, a clinking shot glasses with Rivera and Savorre like they’re old friends. John looks back at Via, who seems thoroughly ruffled at the way Egan slips into their conversation almost effortlessly.

“Maybe he’s already been punched in the jaw. What do they call that, John?” Benny nudges him once more, snapping him from his thoughts.

“Rite of passage?” John fills in the blank, then looks at Via. “It just might have something to do with him not standing and looking like he’s never seen a girl before. Start there.” Via rolls his eyes at John’s remark and John can’t help but be a little amused at the predicament his friend found him in: more likely to get socked in the jaw then welcomed happily into the circle of the women at the end of the bar.

“Thanks for the sage advice, Father John.” He raises his pint.

“What I’m here for.”

“Look who it is!” Curiosity piqued once more, he looks over. Savorre’s excitable greeting is loud enough that John can hear it, but it disrupts nothing. Everything’s loud, everyone’s moving: Savorre included who’s arm stretches to yank a much shorter woman into her side.

Her hair is inky black and pulled into a roll, bangs sweeping over her forehead. Her eyes are dark, too — her nose straight, dark brows neat and at present furrowed. She’s shorter than quite a few of the women that she’s talking to. She says nothing, gives away very little but every now and again she nods, or her nose scrunches, or the corner of her lip moves up in a smile when the women’s laughter reaches his end of the bar. Even from his end, John can see the two butter bars on her collar signifying rank.

She’s pretty, and John feels like he might be doing something wrong in acknowledging it — but he’s also not blind or stupid.

“What was that you were saying about Via staring?” Benny’s voice is pitched low to mutter the joke in John’s ear, and he kind of has half a mind to sock him like the blonde girl apparently did. He shoots Benny a half-baked glare, as if to convey a ‘shut up before someone hears you.’

Not that he’d be especially hard-pressed about Via catching on, if not for the fact that he’d get loud about it, and John wasn’t in the business of making people uncomfortable just because he found her pretty.

“Could always get her name for you, Johnny. Or get her a drink and tell her it’s from Father Jack himself,” Benny continues, relentless in his teasing and John’s listening just enough to scoff and roll his eyes, shaking his head. No, he wasn’t going to do that. He doesn’t even know what he’d say to her. 

“I’m drinkin’. Neumann, are you drinking?” Egan announces. Neumann.

The dark-haired woman smiles, just barely, tilting her head up to look at him.

“Are you buying, Major Egan?” Her voice reminds him of that sweet spot on the piano where it’s not high enough to hurt, but not deep enough to rattle his center of gravity. Smooth, serious, she keeps her arm wrapped around Savorre’s back like they’re a matching pair of dark green socks. Pleased with her answer, he lets them walk up to the bar first before calling out an order from behind them. That small amount of distance lets John see just how dark her eyes are — enough to look like night itself, and it’s with that knowledge and a name, that he decides he’s just content enough to look away.

[latibvles]

friends.

more OCs? more OCs. anyways hi there, plucking from the HBO WWII Rewatch Prompt list — I figured it’d be fun to use it to throw more OCs at the wall and gesture like a crazy woman introduce characters who have been hiding in my docs! Yay lady-pilots and women in the military. Anyways here’s Viv, here’s Willie, and here’s me capitalizing on one of the 100th’s Training Stories that is deeply amusing to ME. if you remember reading this little number — it's the same crew! :) hope you like it

—

“Heard some of them ended up in Vegas.”

“Vegas? No shit.”

“Mhm, word up the ladder is it’s not looking too good for the Colonel.”

There’s a vacancy in the Officer’s Club tonight that was hard not to notice. Not many had made it to their destination — save for the three all-women ones, talking in their hushed whispers, as though recognizing the obvious would get the wings snatched from their uniforms. There wasn’t much time to celebrate a practice exercise well-flown, even if they’d earned it. Even if they were expected to fail and yet were the only demographic of the 100th to pass with flying colors. 

It was a bad look. Most of the 100th was at present spread across the Western U.S, over half of them entirely missing the airfield meant to be their target. Which, if you asked Vivian, was just telling of how many of the men were able to get comfortable quickly — a luxury that she and her crew didn’t have.

Ah, but no one’s asking you much of anything these days, are they, Viv?

Her gaze lifts up towards the approaching figure, fingers curled around two bear bottles. Willie’s expression gives about as much away as it typically does; which is to say, it gives away nothing at all, lips pressed into their neutral state of a tight line, brows furrowed as she sets one bottle on the table and slides it towards her.

“Here I thought you were standing me up,” Viv offers, which gets Willie to crack — just enough that she’s exhaling sharply through the nose and rolling her eyes with subtle affection.

“Right, cause you’ve been stood up,” Willie fires back as Vivian takes the beer bottle from her. “Fat chance, Savorre.”

“I do love when you sweet talk me,” Vivian coos, to which Willie rolls her eyes once more as she surveys the space, taking a seat on the opposing side of the table.

If you’d asked Vivian a long while ago, she’d swear up and down that Wilhelmina Neumann did not like her — for some inexplicable reason. To which the other women in their bunkhouse would attest to something similar. Her black-haired companion always had that very slight frown to her lips, that furrowed brow that suggested she was either disapproving of something or deep in thought. That, and she didn’t talk much. Nowadays, Vivian was more than proud to boast about her multiple successes in making Willie laugh. Willie, not Wilhelmina, because according to the woman herself, it was just “too many syllables.”

She, like the rest of their crew, knew that when Willie had something to say, it’d be in their benefit to listen.

“Any word on Alkire?” Vivian asks, curiously. Willie shakes her head.

“Heard he ended up in Vegas.” Vivian snorts, then fixes Willie with a look, trying to discern if this was one of Willie’s deadpan remarks as opposed to a serious observation.

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was. I think another plane ended up in Tennessee,” Willie looks towards the door, her brows furrowed. “How many of them are losing their wings, do you think?” Irritation creeps into her tone and Vivian doesn’t blame her. Thirty women, three crews, all sitting uncomfortably as their CO says in so many words what it meant for them, specifically, to fail. There was already the doubt in the air that they’d actually see combat, that they’d be doing much of anything besides practice flights over the states. If they weren’t already aware of the uncertainty of their situation — their CO had a specific fascination with reminding them that at any moment this could all get shut down and they’d be sent packing.

“It’s not gonna be us, that’s all I care about,” Vivian shrugs, candid. “Put us in the lead and I bet everyone and their mother would’ve made it to California.”

“Would’ve made it all the way to Hitler’s house.”

“Careful Willie, you’re turning optimistic on me,” At that, Willie smiles, hidden behind the neck of her beer bottle, shoulders shaking in a small laugh as she shakes her head. Rarely did they ever talk like this, rarely were they ever allotted the space to do so. It had to be confined to the walls of their fort — girls whispering secret praises for doing things that the boys did. God forbid they were anything but gracious for the opportunity given to them.

They could embrace these few hours of smugness before reality would sink back in and sour it. Although, after this, Vivian wasn’t sure if she planned on being quiet and humble immediately thereafter. Let them be embarrassed. No sweat off my back. Willie just barely knocks Vivian’s ankle with her foot, then shrugs.

“Is it really optimism? How’re they gonna find England if they can’t find California?” The question hangs heavy in the air, but something about Willie’s face, the way she avoids Vivian’s gaze, has Vivian’s mouth curling into a grin. She’s leaning over the table slightly.

“You know something.” Willie’s brows furrow.

“I do not.”

“Yeah you do. It’s all over your face. Oughta wash it sometime soon.”

“You’re not funny,” Willie narrows her eyes and Vivian’s grin becomes wider. They hold each other’s stare for a few long, silent, seconds, and then Willie looks away once more, sighing in a quiet, bewildered surrender. “Eckley says that Crosby gets pretty bad motion sickness so I’m just thinking about… things like that. Little things. How many crews actually messed up ‘cause of small things or stuff they can’t help,” she shrugs, looking down at the table. “It just…it could’ve been us, y’know? In Vegas.”

“Think we could sort it out before it becomes a problem in the air,” Vivian assures, “if not me or you, then one of the eight other people with us. You better not be getting cold feet on me now,” Trying to weave her reassurance neatly with the joke seems to work, if only a little bit. Willie scoffs and knocks Vivian’s ankle with her foot once again.

“Takes two to fly to Hitler’s house.”

“Exactly,” Vivian affirms with a nod, tilting the neck of the beer bottle towards Willie, who looks at it questioningly. “Call me a bad teammate but I’m gonna enjoy this tonight. Let them figure out what they’re gonna do with their guys who can’t find California. ‘Cause it’s not gonna be our crew and it’s not gonna be us.” Willie nods, clinking the neck of her beer with Vivian’s and then taking a drink.

“Now who’s turning optimistic?”

“Well I’m always optimistic. You’re the one switching things up.” Willie opens her mouth to fire back, but the door opens and her gaze falls on whoever just walked in.

“Why is it so quiet? Someone put on a record — you guys got Goodman?” Willie looks back at Vivian with a wholly bewildered expression — and mouths one phrase as the Officer’s Club seems to fall back into the bustling behavior it was so accustomed to: Guess Egan made it.

[latibvles]

SHIP MIXES !

AN ACQUIRED TASTE — A JUNE X DEMARCO MIX | LISTEN HERE.

COMFORT IN YOUR QUIET — A WILLIE X BRADY MIX | LISTEN HERE.

tagging: @xxluckystrike , @hesbuckcompton-baby , & @upontherisers , for being subjected to my ceaseless rambling <3

[latibvles]

23. Write a ~300 scene between them with no dialogue, only body language.

For Brady and Willie if possible.

Hope you’re doing well! And I’ve been enjoying all your writing and characters!!

my anonymous pal, this is actually… extremely fitting for them. I hope you’re doing well too! ♡

—

If nothing else, John can pride himself on being fluent in Willie’s silence.

So he expects this, her frame occupying the door to his barracks, long after his crew have disposed of their kit bags in their racks and left. He expects the feeling of her, small but solid, pressing against the muscles of his back.

Her hands are bunching his uniform at the sides, grasping fabric tightly between fists that he knows now are calloused not just from handling controls, but from colored pencils tucked carefully into her footlocker. Her ear is pressed to that spot between his shoulder blades and if John can hear how hard his heart is pounding then surely she can hear it too.

He reaches for one of her hands, running his thumb over its roughness and torn skin, bringing it to his front and then to his lips to press a kiss there before resettling her arm around his hips, and sure enough the other arm comes to wrap around him.

The stale air of their forts cling to their skin, the routine questions of interrogation still echo in his mind, and John, too, is stiffer than plywood until Willie’s muscles seem to relax into the curves of his covered spine. That’s when he lets out an exhale that refused to leave the cavity of his ribs, takes his hat off to set it atop his cot haphazardly and go back to running his fingers along Willie’s knuckles.

His heart, loud as the road of an engine, hammers out the same three two-word sentences. You’re here. I’m here. We’re here.

She squeezes him once around the waist, and John, ever the linguist when it comes to his Wilhelmina, knows exactly what she means.

OTP ASKS.

[latibvles]

IF THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE BEING THE LAST MAN STANDING, WILLIE HATES IT MOST OF ALL.

lt. wilhelmina willie neumann, more here.

[latibvles]

Mahalia laughs again from the girls’ fire and he turns his head toward the sound. She’s sharing a log with Willie and they’re cackling, falling over each other and wiping their eyes as Dolores tells a story that has her gesturing wildly with her hands. ( x )

extremely delighted every time i get to play in this sandbox the demons one with this one they’re everything to me your honor @upontherisers

[hesbuckcompton-baby]

anyway does @latibvles and their ocs ever make you absolutely feral and insane

willie and brady you will always be famous

[latibvles]

7. Write a ~300 word love scene for them. For Willie and Brady.

Please and thank you.

could be considered an extension of this / a small glimpse into the aftermath. live laugh love willie and brady

—

She’s laughing and flushed when they make it back to the hotel — and she’s beautiful, too. Willie’s a few steps ahead of him, mounting stairs and John is unapologetic in his admiration, drinking in the sight of her before him. They’d gotten separate rooms; Willie didn’t ask about it and John didn’t want her to think he was… expecting anything from her. If he could just have a weekend, alone, spending time with her, he’d be a lucky man.

He is a lucky man. Knows as much when she reaches the platform and he spins her once more just to make her laugh a little more. He thinks, briefly, that he could get drunk on such a sound.

Their rooms are across from each other’s, which is convenient for saying goodnight.

John watches her as she stalls a moment at her own door, giving him one last look. His lips still warm from kissing her during their dance, his heart still hammering in his chest. Willie’s smile, small and reserved, is just another reminder of that: that he’s lucky to see it, lucky to be the cause of it, lucky to know her as he does. She’s slipping into her room but John is stopping her door with his foot before he can disappear entirely.

“Told you I’d make it up to you,” he reminds her when Willie opens the door and gives him a questioning look. She smiles, laughing breathlessly once more.

“That you did.” She tilts her chin up to meet him, and John, still drunk off her laughter, takes her face in his hands to sear another kiss against her awaiting lips.