c'était la verité

Anything to Anywhere (Masters of the Air):

Tumblr Masterlist / AO3

A ferry pilot with an attitude, if Stella Finley wasn't so pretty she knows she would be widely disliked at Thorpe Abbotts. For many men she's not quite pretty enough to risk getting too close. For John Egan, her bite is far more exciting than her bark. If Stella and John had more time together in the simplicity of civilian life, maybe their relationship wouldn't be what it is, overly dependent and complicated and passionate, feral when they can't seem to find common ground. But they didn't. And it is. Maybe it has to be. Where they're going it's cold and dark and dangerous, and both of them know they'd be the first to burn to keep each other warm.

Why All This Music? (Masters of the Air):

Tumblr Masterlist / AO3

Freddie has no interest in getting to know any new pilots. She's known loss too intimately, carried the weight of it around every day for two and a half years, tucked it into bed beside her like a childhood teddy bear. But these American airmen crowding into the airfield, throwing their weight around and commanding attention and forcing absolutely everyone to be their friend, won't take no for an answer. Freddie has no interest in romance. She's had her chance at love and she lost it, and she's mostly content to let the other girls have their turn. But one of these American airmen, a pilot with bright blue eyes and a shy smile, won't take no for an answer. It's not easy, giving away a heart which has been poorly patched up and trusting that it'll be looked after. But if Freddie's going to trust anyone, she's going to trust Rosie. She can only hope he'll prove to her that her trust hasn't been misplaced. She can only hope that, once all of this is over, she'll end up with something worth showing for her efforts, instead of a heart so broken it's no good to her anymore, shattered twice over and never to beat properly again.

All Things Nice (Band of Brothers):

AO3

Cutting off all of her hair, faking a medical examination, and signing up for the paratroopers aren't feats that were necessarily easy to achieve. They also weren't done out of a desire to prove herself, or to demonstrate that women could do more than keep the home fires burning, or even an ambition to experience combat. They were done out of desperation. On the wrong side of the pond and desperate to get home, as soon as Posey discovers that the fastest way back to Europe is via troopship her decision is made. Now all she has to do is make it through basic training. That, and make sure no one finds out. She supposes she'll find out what little girls are really made of in the process.

The Spirit of the Corps (Band of Brothers):

AO3

Charlie Lancaster leaves home knowing only that she wants to help. There's a war on across the ocean, and boys her age are fighting and dying for the cause. Why shouldn't she be playing her part in making sure their sacrifices aren't in vain? Assigned to the field hospital attached to a company of paratroopers, Charlie quickly gets swept up in the whirlwind of nursing in the European Theatre of War. She did well in training, but putting that training into practice is an entirely different ball game. Time and time again she will ask herself whether all of this was worth it, whether there really was much use in putting herself through all of this. Along the way she will find her answer, but perhaps not in the likeliest of ways.

Juliette Chevalier Duology (Band of Brothers):

Book 1: AO3

Having worked undercover across Europe for the majority of wartime, Juliette Chevalier has become used to living as a mere shadow of the world. Never staying in one place too long to be caught and never returning home, the only family she has known since 1939 has been the men she’s served alongside. However, when the tide of the war begins to turn and the need for brute force becomes more than ever before, Juliette finds herself thrust among the ranks of a group of brash American paratroopers, and suddenly she has to learn how to live in the light again. One can never remain a shadow forever.

Book 2: AO3

Juliette Chevalier and her team have been sitting on a huge secret. A secret they never thought would come out. But when circumstances permit for their identities to be revealed, they find themselves hidden in amongst Easy Company, a company of American paratroopers about to make their first jump into combat. But whilst the Americans are making their debut behind enemy lines, Juliette has been operating undercover for far too long. Her time, it seems, has very much run out; her story has an ending and she knows very well what it is. Remembering has always been painful, but retelling her story in such vivid detail is inevitably much, much worse.

Short Form:

Ruin the Friendship - Benny DeMarco x OC

One Shots:

The Last Time I Saw Paris - George Luz x OC

What I Always Say - Don Malarkey x OC

One Day, Maybe Soon - Babe Heffron x OC

She hadn’t made it terribly subtle during their first encounter, the little darling. Blushing and stuttering and gazing at him wide-eyed, she’d had about as much composure as he’d had the first time a pretty girl had ever shown interest in him.

He’d liked Ollie immediately, not because of her crush on him but because he could tell she was one of those people who were genuinely sweet, genuinely good, not because they wanted to be perceived that way but just because they were.

And, of course, he had eyes. She was a very pretty girl. It wasn’t lost on him.

Unfortunately, that was as far as his affection for her went.

Which was not to say that he was lacking in affection for her - in fact, he felt more for her, as a strictly platonic friend, than he’d felt for the vast majority of his past girlfriends. He adored Ollie, in fact. Which meant the guys never laid off of him about her crush and their friendship.

They had a complicated relationship, Ollie always told everyone. She loved him and he loved her - just not in the same way. It worked, she was fine, she just wasn’t sure how either of those things were true. Complicated, yes. But that was okay with her.

They had a very simple relationship, Benny always told everyone. They liked each other. They got along well. They found each other funny, enjoyed each other’s company, always looked out for one another. There was nothing, really, to be confused about.

Unfortunately, those two things could not both be true at the same time. One of them was always bound to end up wrong.

***

The airfield was buzzing with activity as Benny hopped off the back of a truck and heaved his flight bag over his shoulder. “Winks,” he greeted as he started towards his plane at an amble, glad for his sunglasses in the early morning sunshine. “Where’s Ollie?”

Winks looked up from where he’d been hunched over in one of the engines, seeming disorientated for a second at having been addressed. He adjusted his footing as he turned to face Benny and Benny worried, for a moment, that he was going to tip the whole ladder he was standing on over.

“Major Egan requested she look his plane over, sir,” Winks told him, adjusting the fit of his cap. “He’s got some sort of problem in the control panel he wanted her to take a look at before wheels up.”

Benny nodded, glancing in the general direction of where he knew the plane Bucky was flying was, though he couldn’t see it for the plane beside him. He considered what Winks had said for a moment, then clicked his tongue as he turned back, shifting his bag up higher on his shoulder. 

“I can’t fly a plane Ollie hasn’t checked, Winks, you know this,” he called, his voice half-joking, half-warning. Indeed, as much as he tried to keep it casual, everyone knew there was truth to the sentiment - he really wouldn’t fly a plane Ollie hadn’t looked over. Which wasn’t to say he didn’t trust Winks or Lemmons or any of the other mechanics - just that Ollie was his good luck charm. And he knew she would always go the extra mile to make sure she was sending him up in a plane which was fit to get him home to her again.

“I know, sir,” Winks assured him. “She had a look before she went over there but she said she’d be back before wheels up, and I’ll bet you can hold her to that.”

Benny shrugged, a smile ghosting over the corners of his mouth as he glanced once more in the direction he knew she currently was. “Oh, I’ll hold her to it,” he assured Winks, then tipped the brim of his crusher cap at him to encourage him back to work.

Benny was restless in the cockpit. He’d remained on the tarmac for as long as possible, waiting for Ollie, but she hadn’t shown up yet. Too busy with Bucky’s plane. He shook his head, looking down into his lap and adjusting his flight harness. She’d never been too busy for him before.

His knees were both bouncing as Winks called out that his work was finished and he was good to fire up the engines. Benny offered Winks a thumbs up but little more as he urged the plane to life.

His gaze was hard on the control panel, watching the dials, when she finally showed up.

“Benny!” she called, bounding around the front of the plane to the side he always sat in.

As though someone had flicked a switch in him, all the tension left his body as he turned and leaned out the window to see her better.

“Ollie,” he called back. “Where you been?!”

Ollie was grinning, her eyes bright and mischievous as she slowed to a stop beneath his window, her hair wild as it caught in the wind behind her. “You didn’t think I’d forget you, did you?” she teased, brushing his question aside.

Benny rolled his eyes, laughing to himself as he adjusted his sunglasses to make sure they didn’t slip off his nose as he talked to her.

“Always had faith in you, Ollie,” he assured her, chuckling. “Didn’t doubt you for a second.”

“Liar.”

He laughed.

“Look,” she called next, still grinning at him, “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got a plane to check over, if you don’t mind.”

Benny gave her a lazy salute. “Alright, I won’t keep you.” He was still smiling to himself as he settled back into his seat.

Beside him, his co-pilot scoffed.

“What?” Benny said, shooting him a glance.

Thayer shrugged. “Nothin’.”

“What?” Benny insisted.

Thayer laughed. “Still can’t fly a plane little Ollie ain’t checked over.” He shrugged once more. “Just funny, ‘s all.”

“Why?”

“You was never like that in training.”

“Training’s different.”

Thayer shrugged. “Whatever you say, Benny.”

“She’s keeping you alive too, you know,” Benny reminded him.

Thayer laughed. “She’s smart,” he relented. “But so’s Winks. So’s all of ‘em.”

“Well,” Benny told him evenly, “we have Ollie.”

Thayer chuckled, leaning forward to adjust the photograph of his wife tucked into one of the dials. “Sure, Benny,” he agreed. “And ain’t we lucky?”

It was only once Ollie had called out her requisite, “All clear!” that Benny started pre-flight checks.

Dutifully, Ollie waited beneath the window for him to finish.

“All good,” he called down to her.

Ollie gave him a toothy grin. “Glad to hear it,” she said. “Have a safe flight, okay?”

“Try my best,” he assured her.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Try harder than that.”

“Ollie!” Ken called from behind her, easing the jeep he was driving to a stop. “Off the runway! Come on, let the man do his job!”

“I am!” she insisted, giggling as she raced over to hop in the back. “Bye, Benny!” she called once she was seated.

He was laughing as he watched her, and tipped the brim of his crusher cap at her. “See ya later!” He waited until Ken had fully driven away before he pulled the window closed and settled back into his seat, ready, now, for the mission ahead. Assured, now, that the plane wouldn’t let him down.

***

In the officers’ club that night, while everyone chatted about the notable parts of their flights and everything else they could think of, careful not to mention any of the boys who hadn’t made it back or were now lying in the infirmary, Benny had his arm around Ollie’s shoulders, keeping her close in the midst of the big group huddled together around the bar.

It was friendly, Ollie knew, and much as the impulse to pretend it wasn’t was intoxicating, she knew that was far too dangerous a game to play. But as she turned to look at Benny as he talked, the hand dangling off her shoulder, the smile hiding in the corner of his mouth, the tiny mole beneath his left eye, the single strand of hair which kept coming loose and hanging over his forehead - it all made it so difficult to remember what was good for her.

When he finished talking and caught her eye, smiling just a little bit wider for it and giving her shoulder a fond squeeze, she melted.

She turned back around to look at Croz as he started talking, lacing her fingers together lest she do something with them she shouldn’t.

“Alright, next round,” Brady was saying after a few more anecdotes. “I’ve got half, who else?” He scanned the group and his eyes caught on Benny, pointing a finger at him and prompting, “Benny?”

Playfully, Benny groaned.

“Come on, it’s your turn,” Brady insisted.

“‘S always my turn,” Benny muttered so only Ollie could hear. He grinned when it made her laugh.

“Anything for you, Ollie?” Brady asked as he finished taking orders. “Another beer?”

“Still half full,” she informed him, holding up her pint glass.

“A shot, then,” Dougie said. “Come on, I’ll do one with you.”

“You trying to get me drunk, Dougie?” she asked, grinning.

“I’m trying to get you fun, Ollie,” he corrected.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m always fun.”

“Yeah, but when you’re drunk you’re not attached to DeMarco,” he pointed out.

Ollie could feel her cheeks light up in flames and prayed her makeup was thick enough to conceal it. She fought to retain composure. “That’s because when I’m drunk he can’t handle me,” she joked casually, trying to dismiss Dougie’s insinuation.

“When you’re drunk no one can handle you, Ollie,” Benny retorted without missing a beat.

“Aw, bet I could,” Bucky crooned as he sidled up to the bar beside them. He gave her a wink as he draped himself over it. “What am I getting you, Ollie?”

“I’ve got it,” Benny said immediately. He gave Bucky a tight smile and Ollie’s shoulder a final squeeze before following Brady to the bar.

Ollie rolled her eyes. “I still have half a beer left!” she insisted as he went. “And anyway, Meatball’s running around in circles in the corner so I’m gonna take him outside. The poor little baby’s too well behaved to have an accident but too polite to tell anyone he needs to go, so he just ends up all stressed out.” She offered a wave to the group as she headed over to where Meatball, Benny’s Siberian Husky, was entertaining himself beside a table of wireless operator girls, then smiled at the one who’d been watching him as she accepted his lead and towed him with her outside.

Once outside, she wilted, leaning back against the wall and letting her eyes fall shut. She listened as Meatball walked around in the grass, searching for the perfect spot to relieve himself, and picked the ends of her hair up to hold them off of her neck, willing the breeze to cool her down.

Inside, Benny did not know the same peace. “What’s that thing between you and Ollie, huh, Benny?” Brady asked him as they waited for their order, even though Benny was sure he’d had this same conversation ten times over already just this week.

“There is no ‘thing’ between me and Ollie, Brady,” Benny replied calmly enough. He kept his attention focused on Atley where he was making up their drinks. “We’re friends.”

“She’s hot,” said Dougie helpfully from behind him.

Benny rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you concentrate on the bombs, Dougie, alright?”

Dougie held his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m just saying, if you don’t jump on that, there’re a lotta guys here who would.”

“Come on, man,” Benny huffed, disapproving, “don’t talk about her like that. She’s a lady.”

“She’s Ollie,” Dougie retorted with a short laugh of disbelief. “She ain’t a lady like Helen’s a lady -”

“She’s a lady,” Benny insisted sharply. “She might fix planes instead of hand out doughnuts, but she’s still a lady, and you’d do better to remember that.” Swiftly, he picked up one of the beers Atley had placed in front of him and pressed it to Dougie’s chest. “Now drink that and cool yourself down a little so you don’t make yourself Ollie’s problem when she gets back in here. I don’t wanna hear another word out of you about how fuckin’ hot you think she is, alright?”

Dougie stared at him with raised eyebrows.

Benny pressed the drink to his chest more insistently. “Alright?” he demanded.

Chuckling under his breath, Dougie nodded. “Yeah, Benny,” he said, accepting the beer. “Alright.”

***

Ollie was always waiting with the other mechanics when the planes came back from a mission. She never said so, but Benny knew it was because she wanted to make sure he got home safe.

And coming home after a raid was always going to be the best part of the whole sordid affair, but it was Ollie’s smile as she laid eyes on him, her bouncing up and down on the grass and clapping as she celebrated his return, that he thought of when he thought of coming home. At some point, ‘homecoming’ had become synonymous with ‘Ollie’ in his own personal dictionary.

So, today, when he taxied back down the runway and opened his window and looked out, searching for a glimpse of that wide smile and those bright eyes, his heart dropped when he didn’t find them. He saw the other mechanics sitting together on the grass and cheering, saw Lemmons and Winks in their jeep clapping as they greeted the incoming planes, but he didn’t see Ollie.

“One more down,” Thayer said from beside him, heedless of his turmoil. “Nice flight, Benny.”

“Yeah,” Benny agreed, sitting back in his seat and plastering on a stiff smile. “One step closer to home, huh?”

“You got it.”

They shook hands when the plane came to a halt, a tradition they had for every successful flight, then did all their checks to make sure the plane was stable and safe for the mechanics to start work on. And if Benny was quicker that day than he’d ever been before, Thayer didn’t say anything, just accompanied him through the checks and followed him out of the plane, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed him on the way to the waiting trucks.

Benny only distantly acknowledged him. “Hey, Lemmons!” he called as he slowed in his path towards the trucks.

For his part, Ken Lemmons looked completely unsurprised at being addressed.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” Lemmons answered as he came jogging over. “You looking for Ollie?”

“Yeah,” Benny confirmed. “She alright? She always makes sure to be here.”

Lemmons’ smile was stiff and polite. “She’s - uh - well, I don’t mean to distract you from interrogation, sir, but she’s in an awful lotta pain. She wanted to be here but I made her sit this one out.”

Benny’s stomach had dropped. “What do you mean she’s ‘in a lotta pain’?”

“Oh, nothing dangerous, sir,” Lemmons raced to assure him. “Nothing life-threatening. She just, uh - well, sir, I don’t know if you’ve got sisters or anything but she’s got some awful bad stomach aches, if you catch my meaning. Had ‘em a few times before but not as bad. Once a month, if you catch my meaning. Sir.”

To his credit, not only was Lemmons subtle about it, but for all his talking around the subject he was also completely unabashed, using indirect language more for propriety and professionalism’s sake than because he himself was shy about it.

Benny’s eyebrows furrowed. “She gets it bad every time?”

“Not this bad, sir, but I know she struggles quite a lot.” Lemmons offered an easier smile this time. “Just good at hiding it, I guess, sir.”

Benny didn’t like the thought that she hadn’t told him. Worse - that he hadn’t noticed.

“She in the infirmary?” he wondered.

Lemmons chuckled. “Taking up a bed in the infirmary right before all you guys get back?” he asked. “Have you met Ollie?”

“Right.” Benny didn’t find this joke funny in the context of only now finding out she was in significant pain once a month and he hadn’t once noticed. “So she’s in her hut, then,” he deduced.

“Yes, sir.”

“Alone?”

“Well -” Lemmons seemed a bit caught off guard now, rubbing the back of his neck and fixing his eyes on Benny’s plane. “I was with her for a while but, you know, I gotta work. And all the other girls who live there are working, too. It’s the middle of the day.”

“Right,” Benny repeated. His smile didn’t reach his eyes as he clapped Lemmons on the shoulder and started past him. “Thanks, Lemmons. I’ll catch you later.”

“Sure, sir,” Lemmons agreed. “Tell Ollie I hope she’s feeling better, alright?”

Benny sat stiff as a board all through interrogation, speaking only when spoken to and staring mostly down at his hands in his lap, waiting for the whole thing to be over. The second he was out of there, he was all but sprinting into the changing room, loath to stand in line and wait for the other guys to take their sweet time in the shower, and making sure to be quick about showering, drying, and dressing himself.

His hair was still wet and dripping into his eyes when he reemerged and started on his way to the nissen huts. His hands were rough and impatient as he pushed it back, raking it into some semblance of a place and pushing past the burning in his calves where he was walking so fast.

Lemmons was right. At this time of day, the place was all but deserted. Life on an airfield during a war would do nothing to a person if not make them busier than they’d ever been - no one had the time to venture back here unless they absolutely had to.

And even when the guys had time after coming back from a raid, they chose to hang around with each other instead of risk lying in bed and thinking themselves into oblivion about everything they’d just seen and done. So Benny was unaccompanied as he navigated his way to Ollie’s hut, which he only knew the location of because of the many occasions he’d insisted on walking her home after she got a bit too drunk in the officers’ club.

Still, he’d never been inside. That was against the rules. So when he lifted his fist to knock on the door he hesitated, wondering whether she’d even let him in, even want him in.

He shook his head, decided it didn’t matter. If she was in pain, he needed to make sure she was okay. In fact, he wasn’t going to force her to get out of bed to answer the door to him. So, he knocked to alert her to his presence, then opened the door anyway, calling out a tentative, “Ollie?” so that she’d know it was him.

She didn’t reply, but he spotted her immediately, lying face down in a bed in the centre of the room, a pillow over the back of her head and both hands keeping it pressed down.

In spite of himself, he smiled. “Ollie,” he said again, shutting the door behind him and beginning to approach her bed.

Beneath the pillow, she turned her face to him, then lifted one side so she could peer out from under it. “Benny?” she mumbled, squinting into the light from the windows. “You’re back,” she added, letting a relieved smile cross her lips.

“Hey,” he greeted her softly, coming to stand at the foot of the bed next to hers. “Lemmons said you’re not feeling well.”

She frowned immediately, as though he’d reminded her, and let the pillow fall back over her face again. “I’m okay,” she said, her voice muffled beneath it. “Just give me a couple of hours.”

He laughed. “Why? What’s happening in a couple hours?”

“I have to beat Brady in a drinking competition.”

Benny snorted. “I’m sure he’ll accept a rain check.”

“He’ll accuse me of chickening out because he thinks I’ll lose.”

“Then I’ll beat him up.”

Reluctantly, Ollie laughed.

Benny grinned.

“You need me to do anything?” he wondered after a beat.

“Give Meatball a kiss from me and tell him I love him.”

Benny shook his head, chuckling to himself. “Anything for you, Ollie,” he specified.

“That is for me.”

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” he amended his question. He was finding it hard to stifle his smile at the mess of her hair pouring out from beneath her pillow and the shape of her feet rubbing against each other beneath the sheets.

“No,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “I’m okay. Just being dramatic.”

She was obviously hit with a wave of pain just then, because her entire body went stiff and her hands clamped down over the pillow.

“Ollie?” he asked warily.

She didn’t say anything for a moment. And then, when she had the breath, she gasped, “I’m fine,” and curled in on herself on her side, tucking her knees into her chest.

Benny was frowning as he watched her.

It took one more wave of pain for him to disregard any fears of crossing any lines. Shaking his head, his eyebrows knitted together, he came to sit on the edge of her bed on the side she had her back to, then gently laid a hand on her back and rubbed it softly up and down.

She was motionless for a moment, likely lost in the throes of pain, until the tension started to loosen from her shoulders.

Benny’s eyes were already on where her head was beneath the pillow when she lifted it and glanced back at him. She was so pale it made his heart hurt, so wide-eyed and vulnerable and sincere as she gazed at him.

He offered a tiny smile.

She looked away. “I, um,” she said, then cleared her throat. “I have a hot water bottle,” she said, and reached beneath her blanket to produce a cuddly giraffe which, he supposed, must have been housing her hot water bottle. “But it’s gone cold.”

“I’ll refill it,” he said immediately, reaching for it.

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’ve just been using the bathroom taps.” Before he could intervene, she had swung her legs out of bed and pushed herself, with visible effort, to her feet. “They don’t get very hot, but -”

The surprise of seeing her pyjamas must have deafened him, because he didn’t hear a word that came out of her mouth after that. Because when he imagined Ollie in her pyjamas - which, really, he couldn’t say he’d spent much time doing - he’d assumed she wore some sort of shirt and pants, uniform-esque and unassuming.

What he had most certainly not imagined was a lacy dress, with a bow in the centre of her chest and a hem that brushed the mids of her thighs.

It was only when she had to hold onto the bathroom door for support before she could actually go in there that he remembered himself, clamping his jaw shut and launching himself to his feet.

“No, hey, come on,” he was insisting as he hurried after her. “Back in bed, Ollie, come on.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, pushing up off the door. “I just need -”

“I’ll go to the kitchen and get some boiled water -”

“I don’t need boiled water,” she cut across him, peering up into his face with her big blue eyes and her lacy nightdress. And who was he to argue with her then?

“Alright,” was all he could think to say.

She smiled, triumphant, then headed for the sinks, which she also leaned on for support before he, again, remembered himself.

He snuck up behind her and swept her up into his arms, laughing while she complained. “You’re getting in bed and staying there,” he told her over the top of her protests, walking her back to bed. “And I’m getting you a hot water bottle that’s actually hot and you’re not gonna complain. You’re gonna lie there and you’re gonna say, ‘Thank you, Benny’ when I come back, and then you’re gonna feel better. Alright?”

He laid her down, forcing his eyes to stick to her face and not the miles of bare leg beneath her. 

Ollie fell quiet, staring at his face right back.

“Alright?” he prompted.

She nodded, watching as he pulled the blanket back up over her and tucked her in.

“Alright,” he confirmed, smiling. “Now stay here, alright? I’ll be back in just a second.”

With that, he raced back into the bathroom to retrieve the giraffe, then hurried out into the brilliant sunshine in the direction of the kitchen.

While he was gone, Ollie stared at the ceiling, wondering why he made her life so hard sometimes. He was only being kind, she knew, which was why she loved him so much, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? That she loved him so much. And that she knew he didn’t love her and yet she still couldn’t not love him. And that he knew she loved him and yet he was still so kind to her, still so willing to be her friend. So many boys she’d grown up with had been so spiteful to the girls who had liked them when they hadn’t liked them back. Even now that she was grown up, she’d seen so many men be cruel to the women they didn’t return affection for. But not Benny. He’d known the whole time and had never been anything other than sweet to her, undeterred by her affection for him, no less affectionate towards her just because he didn’t feel it romantically.

It was suffocating. It was wonderful. It was… complicated. What was between them was always complicated.

And her stomach hurt so fucking much.

Benny returned quicker than she would have thought possible, and he was unspeakably gentle as he lifted her blanket to lay the now-hot giraffe down over her stomach, as he resumed his seat behind her on the bed and recommenced rubbing her back.

She mumbled her thanks but wasn’t sure how intelligible it was, not while she was melting into the mattress.

Benny smiled all the same, tenderly brushing some of her hair back from her face as he watched her settle, glad he was able to make her more comfortable.

He sat there with her, quietly, rubbing her back and never tiring of it even when his wrist started to ache, until she fell asleep. And his eyes could not seem to move from her face. So animated when she was awake, so peaceful when she was asleep. He’d always known she was pretty but he was reminded suddenly quite how pretty she was. The kind of pretty that tugged on his heart strings. The kind of pretty that got prettier the longer you looked at it.

He really had always known she was pretty. He remembered thinking so when they’d first met. But it was staggering to him now that he’d almost kind of forgotten it.

She was just so much his friend, and he assumed that was why he’d forgotten or become blind to it or whatever had gotten lost in translation. Somewhere between that blushing, shy, earnest girl he’d first met and the effervescent, confident, bubbly one he knew now, he’d been looking at her but not really seeing her, maybe afraid of what he’d find and what it would stir up in him and what that would mean.

He was afraid now, even, while he was rubbing her back and her eyes were shut but her lips were open and he was sitting beside her on the bed she slept in every night. Because they were friends. And that was too good a thing to ruin just because he had just now, just way too late, realised that she’d seen something in them that was true, even though he’d always denied it.

No, it was too late now. Things had changed now since she’d fallen in puppy love with him at first sight. She had a lot more men after her now - Dougie, for instance, or Bucky, if his requests for her to look over his plane before missions were anything to go by. And Benny had only ever told her no, so why should she hang onto a hope he’d given her no reason to protect?

Besides, was he really that shallow? Was he really going to ruin their friendship, maybe the most precious thing he’d ever truly been able to call his own, because he’d seen her in a lacy nightdress one day and remembered that she was gorgeous? He’d never claimed to be the smartest man in the world but he was smarter than that.

No, that really would be idiotic. He wouldn’t do that to them, couldn’t do that to her. They had a good thing going here, and that needed to be protected. At all costs.

***

Her laughter was bright and wild, her smile dead centre of the room. It was hard not to pay attention to them when they were both that uninterested in what everyone else thought of them, both much more interested in how they felt than how they came across.

Benny watched from the bar, but one in a crowd of people watching, as Bucky spun Ollie around the dancefloor, singing loudly over the instrumental the band was playing and making her laugh louder whenever his voice cracked.

At Benny’s feet, Meatball was watching too. He barked when it looked like Ollie was going to fall, but Bucky caught her at the last moment.

Benny’s jaw ticked at how reckless Bucky was being with her. He wasn’t watching her footing at all.

“Oh, my sweet boy!” Ollie called over to Meatball when she understood why he’d barked. “I’m okay, I promise!” And then she laughed as Bucky spun her again, effectively diverting her attention away.

Benny took a long draw of his beer, one of his feet tapping along to the rhythm of the song. He desperately hoped it would end soon.

“Atley,” he called suddenly, turning back to the bar, downing the rest of his beer in one go. “Another beer.”

“You got it, sir,” Atley confirmed, accepting his pint glass back and exchanging it for a new one.

Benny leaned both hands on the edge of the bar and listened to Ollie’s laughter over the music, imagining how Bucky was swinging her roughly around and clenching his hands tighter because of it.

“Song’s so good it makes you wanna dance, huh?” Ev Blakeley remarked, sidling up beside him, resting his beer on the bar.

“That an offer, Ev?” Benny asked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

Blakeley scoffed a laugh. “Just an observation,” he answered him. “Here’s another: Helen’s free, sitting at a table over yonder with Tatty.”

“And?” Benny asked, watching Atley draw his beer.

“And Tatty won’t dance with me while Helen doesn’t have a partner,” Blakeley said, speaking slowly, as though Benny should have assumed that was the reason. “Do me a solid?”

“Why don’t you ask Bucky to ask her?” Benny asked. He nodded to Atley when he slid the fresh beer over to him, sliding over the money and watching as Atley went to the register to get him his change. “Sure he’d be happy to do it.”

“Bucky’s dancing with Ollie,” Blakeley replied. “You didn’t see ‘em?”

“Must’ve missed it.”

Blakeley shrugged. “Oh, well, he is. I wouldn’t wanna interrupt and leave Ollie without a partner.”

“As if she’d ever be without a partner,” Benny mumbled.

Blakeley didn’t hear him.

“So, what do you say?” he pressed as Benny accepted his change from Atley and tucked it into his pocket. “You and Helen, next song, one dance?”

To his credit, Benny considered it, but then he glanced over his shoulder and saw Bucky with his head ducked down to Ollie’s ear, her hand curled around the back of his neck so she could hold him there and hear him better. She was on her tiptoes even still. And when Bucky finished speaking and drew back to gauge her reaction, she was giggling and it made him grin.

Benny turned away. “Sorry, Ev,” he said, and headed for the door, towing Meatball behind him. 

“Aw, Benny, come on!” Blakeley called after him, but Benny was already pushing the door open and letting it fall shut behind him.

***

It was Ollie’s birthday and everyone was celebrating. They didn’t have the ingredients for a cake but they had balloons and a banner, and one of the wireless operator girls had even gotten her a plastic silver tiara, which she had squealed about when she’d seen it and subsequently refused to take off.

It was a testament to how well-liked she was, Benny thought, that so many people had decided to attend her makeshift party tonight. True, it was in the officers’ club, so some people were probably just there because they were going there anyway, but a lot of people had rushed up to her to wish her a happy birthday when she’d first walked in, and so far she hadn’t had to buy a single drink.

She was wearing a dress her parents had sent her, pale blue like her eyes with a skirt that swished when she twirled. It had a V for a neckline which left the perfect amount of space for the necklace Benny had gotten her - a locket, with a picture of the two of them on one side and a picture of Meatball on the other. She’d sworn not to take that off, either, though she’d promised forever with regard to the necklace, only until the end of the night for the tiara.

Benny couldn’t help but preen a little under her attention when he’d given it to her earlier, because she’d been so genuinely thrilled about it, even a little misty-eyed. Touched, she’d said. She was touched. That it was so pretty, so thoughtful, so very her.

“Oh, Benny,” she’d gushed, “you just see me.”

Yeah, he’d thought, half-smile, half-grimace. I do now.

To her credit, Ollie had saved her first dance of the night for him, and she was not short of partners. But she’d turned them all down in favour of dancing with Benny, and he couldn’t help but feel stupid now for standing off to the side with Meatball and watching her dance with everyone else. He didn’t know why he’d expected the two of them would spend her entire party attached at the hip - he wasn’t her only friend. Just her best one, he hoped.

Nonetheless, when she wasn’t dancing she was at his side, and the room was crowded and sometimes he had to place a hand on her back to ensure someone didn’t bump into her. Ollie didn’t seem to mind - she didn’t even seem to notice - until she had taken so many shots that she took to leaning into him entirely and saving him the trouble of watching out for her.

Her head was nestled beneath his chin and her arms around his waist when he decided she’d probably had a little too much to drink. He was smiling down at the top of her head and the tiara still tucked up amongst her curls when she asked him whether he wanted to do a shot of vodka with her.

“I think you’ve had enough vodka for one night, Ollie,” he told her fondly.

He knew she was frowning even before she lifted her head up to look at him. He still grinned when he saw it.

“It’s my birthday, Benny,” she informed him.

“It is?” he asked, feigning surprise. “No one told me.”

She scoffed. “I’m the birthday girl, and that means I get to have as many shots as I want,” she went on.

“Is that what it means?” Benny asked. “Here I was thinking it meant you were one year older.”

“And one year wiser, and one year prettier, and one year closer to death,” she listed off. “Yes, all of that too. But I’m also one year more entitled to unlimited vodka shots.”

“Well no one told me that on my birthday,” Benny remarked.

Ollie snorted. “I didn’t know you yet on your birthday!”

It was a staggering reminder that he hadn’t actually known her his whole life, they hadn’t actually grown up together, they wouldn’t actually have met if not for a world war.

Ollie was oblivious to his train of thought. “On your birthday, I will get you as many shots as you want, but right now it is my birthday and I have a tiara and that means I am not just the birthday girl but I am the birthday princess and that means I get another shot. Yes?” She was pointing to her tiara.

Benny had started laughing at her before she’d even finished speaking. “Alright,” he conceded, as he’d always known he would. “One more.” And he smiled wider when she grinned and pressed herself up against him in a hug.

One more shot with Benny turned into a few more shots with everyone else, because no one liked to miss out on a shot, and then Benny was watching Ollie dance with Lemmons and his first thought was, She’s so drunk, and his second thought was, No one has ever looked more beautiful than she does right now. And it was a stupid thought, really, because her cheap plastic tiara was slipping and her lipstick was smudged, her hair was messy and her necklace was askew - and yet, it was entirely true. Her blue eyes were bright, her smile was wide, and it was his necklace around her neck, and no one had ever been as uniquely beautiful and totally alive as she was right then. He was enchanted by her, by her capacity for joy, by how she could get more enjoyment out of a plastic tiara and a song she loved than most people could get by winning at the Olympics.

When the song finished she must have felt his eyes on her, for she turned and caught his gaze immediately. And then she was stumbling over to him, and his heart was coiled tight like a fist about to plummet into his gut, and she was reaching for him with both hands and saying, “One more dance with my favourite pilot, yes? And then my birthday can be over.”

It wasn’t much of a dance, more a hug with a side of swaying, but Benny indulged her all the same. And he hoped she wouldn’t be embarrassed when she woke up tomorrow and recalled how drunk she’d been, because he really just thought she was perfect. Messy and uncoordinated and giddy and perfect. He wanted to tell her and knew that he shouldn’t.

Most people had left the club by now, so she didn’t take much convincing to head home when the song ended. Indeed, she was as pliant as a puppy as she allowed Benny to guide her out the door, only protesting once when she asked after Meatball but settling when Benny told her one of the wireless operator girls was looking after him for them.

Ollie spent the walk home leaning all of her weight into Benny and looking up at the stars. Benny made sure to keep her tiara from falling off. And it was so quiet that when Benny asked her, “Have you had a good birthday?” his voice emerged as a whisper, quieter and more earnest than he’d intended, with an air of intimacy he’d been trying to avoid.

“I have had the best birthday in the whole entire world,” Ollie assured him, with the side of her face pressed to his chest as they walked, her lipstick inevitably on his uniform. “Have you had a good my-birthday?” she asked him.

Benny laughed. “Have I had a good your-birthday?” he repeated.

“Mh-hm,” she hummed, to assure him that that was, indeed, what she had meant to ask.

“I’ve had a great your-birthday, Ollie,” he assured her softly. “Best day of the year, if you ask me.”

“Better than Christmas?” she wondered.

“Better than Christmas,” he confirmed.

She giggled. “Makes me happy.”

When they turned a corner and came upon the row of nissen huts hers belonged to, she stopped them for a second and looked up earnestly into Benny’s face. “Benny,” she said.

“Ollie,” he replied.

“D’you remember when I said you can’t handle me when I’m drunk?”

He laughed softly under his breath. “I remember,” he confirmed.

She nodded, accepting this. “Well, I think I was wrong. I think maybe you are the only person who can handle me when I’m drunk.”

“Oh?” Benny humoured her. And then he couldn’t help himself. “What about Bucky?” Because, if he remembered correctly, Bucky had asserted back then that he thought he could handle her, and since then Bucky had certainly made no secret of his attraction to her.

Ollie brushed this notion aside. “Bucky’s always too drunk to handle anyone but himself.” She shook her head. “He’s good for kissing, not much else.”

Benny’s blood ran cold. “You’ve kissed him?” he asked, his voice low, as though afraid to ask because he was afraid of the answer.

Ollie was heedless of the change in him. “Bucky?” she asked redundantly, turning her eyes on the stars. “Yeah, a few times.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, here and there. He gets drunk and he gets handsy, I don’t know. ‘S not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal, Ollie,” Benny said stiffly.

When she looked back over at him, Ollie found his eyebrows drawn down low over his eyes. She frowned. “Benny,” she whispered. She raised one hand and gently laid it on his forehead, using her thumb to smooth over his eyebrows. “Why do you look sad?” she asked.

“I’m not sad -” he began.

“No,” she agreed, cutting across him, still stroking her thumb over his furrowed eyebrows. “Not sad,” she corrected herself. “You’re - concerned?”

“No.”

“Angry?”

“No.”

“Scared?”

Jealous. He shook the thought away and gently pried her hand off of his forehead. “Why would you kiss Bucky?” he asked.

Now it was her eyebrows which furrowed. She shrugged. “Why not?”

“Well,” he started, and grasped for something to say. “Well, do you love him?”

Staring at him silently for a moment, eyebrows furrowed, lips drawn down, Ollie was impossible to read.

And then she laughed. “Do I love him?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Do you?” He felt silly about the question, now that she was laughing, but he did, actually, want to know.

“Do I love Bucky Egan?” she checked once more.

He bristled. “That’s what I asked.”

She shook her head, taking one step back from him. “What do you think, Benny?”

He wouldn’t take the bait. “I don’t know, Ollie,” he told her plainly, “that’s why I asked you.”

She looked at him for one beat, two, and then she laughed again. “Well that’s a silly question,” she told him. “And it’s unkind. And I don’t want you to ask me again.” She lifted both hands then and adjusted her tiara. “It’s so sad that I’m not going to be a princess anymore tomorrow,” she said, changing the subject.

Benny wasn’t sure what to do with himself, so he said all he could think to say. “You’ll still be a princess to me.”

“I will?” she asked, eyes hopeful as she finished adjusting her tiara.

“Of course,” Benny told her. “You were a princess to me yesterday, too.”

“Even when I’m covered in aeroplane oil?”

“Even then,” he confirmed, smiling softly.

Ollie nodded, then stepped into his embrace again. “Benny,” she whispered into his shoulder.

“Ollie,” he whispered back, wrapping her up in his arms and holding her tight, because she didn’t hug him like this when she was sober.

“Thank you for my necklace,” she went on.

Benny smiled and held on tighter. “Not a thing,” he whispered, and sighed silently as she let him go.

***

Try as he might to let it go, Ollie’s admission about Bucky haunted Benny. He couldn’t move on from the knowledge that she’d kissed him. Multiple times, she’d said. And he couldn’t help but wonder if that was all they’d done. It didn’t seem like Bucky to be chaste, but it didn’t seem like Ollie to sleep with someone and not tell him.

Then again, she’d kissed Bucky and not told him. And she’d had those stomach aches every month for several months and never told him until Lemmons had.

So how many secrets did she keep from him, really? Did he really know her as well as he thought?

He was flying today, and Ollie hadn’t checked his plane yet. His knees were both bouncing restlessly as he kept checking his watch.

“She’ll be here,” Thayer assured him, knowing, somehow, not to tease today. “She’s always here.”

Benny replayed their conversation on her birthday over and over again in his mind. She’d called him unkind. She always said the thing she loved most about him was that he was kind. There was weight there, he just couldn’t understand where. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that while he was sitting here, waiting for her, she was checking over Bucky’s plane. Bucky, who didn’t need her like Benny did. Bucky, who could fly without her checking his plane when Benny couldn’t.

“I can’t fly a plane she doesn’t check,” Benny told him lowly, his legs still bouncing beneath him.

Thayer nodded. “I know that. And she knows that. And she’ll be here.”

Benny nodded, his eyes fixed out of the window, waiting for her to appear on the tarmac, bright smile, messy hair, eyes fixed on him.

It ended up getting so close to wheels up that they could hold out no longer. “Benny,” Thayer said, “we gotta do our checks.”

“Right,” Benny said stiffly. “Right.”

So they did their checks. And they spoke briefly on the radio to the tower, who updated them on windspeed.

And then, there she was, beneath his window, windswept and breathless. “Still need me to check you over?” she called up.

Benny’s shoulders slumped in relief. It was all he could do to nod.

And so she checked the plane over. And Benny tried to push the lingering thought that she’d spent all this time checking over Bucky’s plane to the back of his mind, because at least she was here and at least he could fly now.

“All clear!” she called to him after she was finished, flashing him a thumbs up and a toothy grin. She turned around, as though to head off, then thought better of it and turned back. “I checked it over first thing this morning, by the way,” she added. “Before everyone else came out here.”

Benny didn’t know what to say.

“I’d never let you fly a plane I hadn’t checked, Benny,” she said next. “I hope you know that.”

“Ollie!” Ken called to her.

With one final, fleeting smile, she turned and was jogging towards Lemmons’ waiting jeep, then hopping in the back and speeding away.

Benny wasn’t sure what to make of all that. She had come, yes, but she’d been late. And something had changed between them since her birthday party, he just didn’t quite know what.

***

There was a party on tonight in the officers’ club, and Ollie wasn’t invited. Well, she wasn’t sure if she wasn’t invited wasn’t invited, or just wasn’t invited, but either way she wasn’t there.

The thing about Benny was, he was a man. And, like all men, he experienced the world as it was presented to him, not as it really was. So maybe he hadn’t thought properly about what it meant when he’d told her that he had plans before the party which meant he wouldn’t be able to pick her up to take her there, but what it meant to Ollie was that she wasn’t invited.

Indeed, she was sure it wasn’t a thought that had crossed Benny’s mind for a long while now that she wasn’t actually formally allowed into the officers’ club herself. As an enlisted woman, she was not permitted to attend any events held there without an officer inviting her. Benny was always her officer. Even the night of her birthday, when it had been her party they were attending in the club, she’d only been allowed in because she’d had her hand resting in the crook of Benny’s elbow which meant she was his plus one. And her fellow mechanics had only been allowed in because they had also been plus ones, which Ollie herself had gone out of her way to organise for them because she wanted her friends there and she knew no one else would think of it.

But she knew Benny would have forgotten all that. He was, after all, a man. But she wondered all the same whether he would be surprised when he got there tonight to find her absent, or whether that had been his intention when he’d told her he wouldn’t be picking her up.

He was kind, after all. One of the things she loved about him. Big-hearted Benny DeMarco who wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less anyone’s feelings. If he didn’t want her around, she knew he’d never tell her. So maybe this was his way of telling her.

Or maybe he had just forgotten.

Either way, she wasn’t invited that night. She could have gone with someone else, she supposed, but then again, no one asked her, either because they all assumed Benny was taking her or, equally likely, they just didn’t want to.

All the same, tonight she was not in the officers’ club. She only really had a vague idea of what they were celebrating - someone had done something terribly exciting and that was all she knew. But anyway, Ken and Winks had invited her with them and the other mechanics down to the pub in the village, which she had only ever been to a few times but which they frequented with the other enlisted men while Ollie was off schmoozing with the officers. And they teased her the whole way there about how she was “roughing it with the commoners” this evening, ruffling her hair good-naturedly and making sure she knew she was welcome.

While it was so strange not to be here with Benny, it was also about time she learned to be without him. And, she found, it was fun. To talk about the mechanics of the planes and know no one would get bored or ask her what she was harping on about. To joke about work and have everyone laugh and agree, not change the subject to their own jobs. To remember why she loved working with the people she worked with, even though she didn’t see them all that much outside of working hours.

It had been much too long, really, since she’d caught up with all of them.

So, she tried to make up for it now. “How’s Fonda?” she asked Ken decisively, and watched with a smile as he lit up at the mention of his wife.

As Ken rattled off everything Fonda had told him in her last letter, Ollie listened raptly, both fascinated to know what a marriage was like and desperately longing to know for herself. And shocked, even still now, that Kenny, younger than her and such a cherub, was married. The reminder would never not surprise her.

“She always asks after you, too, you know,” Ken was saying. “At the end of every letter, she asks what colour you’re painting your nails, even though they always get chipped, and she asks me for updates on you and -” He cut himself off at the last second, wide-eyed, guilty, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

They never really talked about her relationship to Benny, but Ollie had always known Ken knew. Everyone knew.

Ollie laughed and finished for him, “On me and Benny.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry you have to tell her the same thing every time.”

Ken laughed, rolling his eyes and settling back into his chair and taking a sip of his beer. “I do not have to tell her the same thing every time,” he said at length.

Ollie quirked an eyebrow. “Then you’re making up stories, Kenny, and I hope you don’t make a habit out of lying to your wife.”

“There’s always something new going on between you and DeMarco,” Ken disagreed. “One of you is always doing something to get the other’s attention.”

Ollie furrowed her eyebrows. “What?”

Ken laughed, taking an infuriatingly long sip of his beer.

“Kenny,” Ollie prompted.

Again, he laughed. “What?”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. One of you is always doing something to get the other’s attention.”

“Like what?” Ollie pried, inadvertently leaning towards him across the table.

“Like - I don’t know, you having your little fling with Major Egan.”

“I’m not having a -”

“Ollie.” Ken’s eyebrows were raised, as if to ask her whether she was really going to bare-faced lie to him about this, as if to ask her whether she really thought he was that stupid.

“I wouldn’t call it a ‘fling’,” Ollie muttered, relenting, slumping back in her chair. “And I’m not doing it to get Benny’s attention.”

“Yeah?” Ken challenged her. “And you thought he wouldn’t notice when all of a sudden you’re spending all your time pre-wheels up looking over Egan’s plane and not his?”

“Bucky asked for me first -”

“And you would’ve said no if you didn’t want to do it, Ollie!” Ken exclaimed.

Ollie hated how well he knew her sometimes.

“Well, maybe it’s just nice to be wanted for once, Kenny,” Ollie replied evenly, setting her eyes on her pint of beer and drawing pictures in the sweat on the outside of the glass. “I know you’ve been with Fonda since you were kids so I don’t know if you’ll remember what it’s like to not be wanted, but it’s lonely. So excuse me that when a handsome man decides he wants my attention I give it to him. It’s not because of Benny, and if he’s noticed then that’s his problem, not mine.”

Ken didn’t reply for a long moment.

When Ollie could stand the silence no longer, she snuck a glance up at him and found him watching her closely.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said instantly.

“Like what?” he asked with a tiny smile.

“Like you feel sorry for me,” she said.

“I do feel sorry for you, Ollie,” Ken replied with a small shake of his head. “I feel sorry that you feel that way, because I don’t think there’s a single person who knows you who would ever look at you and be able to figure out that you feel like that.” He shook his head once more, as though puzzled. “You’re so clearly adored.”

Ollie shrugged and looked away, a knee jerk reaction. She could never look people in the eyes when she talked about this. “Yes, Benny loves me,” she acknowledged, “just not like that. I know, everyone knows. My own mother tells me all the time in her letters not to get my hopes up, and that I should be grateful he keeps me around at all when he doesn’t even like me like that, that he could have any pretty wireless operator so I’m lucky he chooses me.”

Ken didn’t reply immediately. And when he did, his voice was a lot quieter. “Are you not gonna ask me what DeMarco does to get your attention?”

Ollie downed the rest of her beer in one go. “Benny doesn’t need to do anything to get my attention, Kenny, and that is the root of the whole problem.”

“Doesn’t stop him,” Kenny said, chuckling.

Ollie didn’t want to entertain fantasies any more than she already did, so she cut that line of thought short and held up her empty glass. “Shall we get another drink? I’m empty, you’re almost empty - so is Winks. Come on, let’s go to the bar!”

“Yeah, it’s Winks’ round,” Kenny said, pushing himself to his feet. “And I’m sure DeMarco would love to know Winks is stealing his move by buying his girl a drink.”

Ollie was not impressed. “Kenny,” she said, shooting him a look as she started to head for the bar.

“What do you think DeMarco would do if someone else - say, I don’t know, Sammy - stole another of his moves and bought you, I don’t know, new nail polish, even though there’s a shortage?”

“Kenny,” Ollie said again. “I know what you’re doing and I don’t like it.”

“What if I asked you to come play with Meatball tomorrow whenever any other guy so much as looks at you -”

“Kenny!”

“What if all of us made sure to talk about every impressive thing we’ve ever done when you’re talking to some other man? Do you think DeMarco would get suspicious then?”

“I get your point, Kenny, oh my god!” Ollie exclaimed, turning to block his path to the bar and giving him a gentle shove. “And, just so we’re clear, you’re delusional! You don’t even see us when we’re at the club - aside from my birthday party,” she hurried to add when he opened his mouth to interject. “But still, you don’t see us all those other times, so you only see a snapshot. And need I remind you of where I’m standing right now, with you, because he uninvited me to the fancy party happening in his fancy club tonight?”

“Maybe he did that to get your attention, too,” Winks put in helpfully, seeming to appear out of nowhere over Ken’s shoulder.

Ollie huffed. “Where did you even come from?!”

“Bathroom,” Winks said with a shrug.

“Well, I’m not talking about this anymore,” Ollie asserted, pushing her shoulders back and turning to face the bar. “He doesn’t like me like that, he’s always made that very clear, and if you see something I don’t it’s because you’re bored, not because you’re smarter than me.”

“Right,” Ken agreed. “‘Cause no one’s smarter than you, Ollie.”

Reluctantly, Ollie cracked a smile. “That’s right,” she approved. “I’m pleased you’re learning, Kenny.”

The group of mechanics had two more rounds before they started up a drinking game, which was terribly complicated to the outside observer but simple to the table of aeroplane mechanics. The fun part, though, wasn’t the game, but the fact that every time someone lost a round they had to stand on their chair and drink an entire glass full of a mix of everyone else’s drinks in one go, which invariably tasted disgusting, because they were all drinking something different.

It was lucky, at least, that the pub was full of enlisted men and women who didn’t mind their rowdiness, which was a lot rowdier than things ever really got in the club. The locals, Kenny informed Ollie, didn’t often come out during the week, so they had the run of the place and the owners didn’t mind what they did as long as they spent money and didn’t break anything, which were rules which everyone was happy to follow.

So they played their game, cheering when people got things right and heckling when they got things wrong, laughing whenever anyone lost a round, chanting when anyone had to down a drink because of it.

When Ollie lost the round, she was immediately proclaiming that the game was fixed to anyone who would listen.

“Kenny cheated!” she was exclaiming. “He cheated, I saw it with my own two eyes!”

“You’re a liar, Jane Oliver!” Ken shouted over her, laughing. “Now get on your damn chair!”

“But it’s not fair!” Ollie cried, but she allowed Winks to pull her to her feet anyway. “He cheated!” she was still insisting even when she was standing on her chair and Ken was handing her a glass filled with a muddy-coloured liquid, beer and red wine and vodka and she couldn’t even remember what else.

“Alright, Ollie, down the hatch!” Ken said, grinning and starting up a table-wide clap. “O-llie!” he started everyone up chanting. “O-llie! O-llie!”

***

In the club, Benny’s eyes had been stuck to the door the entire night. His hands hadn’t ceased their fidgeting. And every time the door opened he sat up a little straighter, craning his neck around passersby to get a good look at who came in, and then inevitably deflated again when he found that it wasn’t Ollie.

Meatball looked lost without her too. Benny had been watching him watching the door as well, had seen him get excited every time he heard the clack of heels and then heard him whine when the face didn’t match the one he was hoping for.

When he came to sit beside them, Brady watched this all happen twice before he laughed. “Someone you’re expecting, Benny?” he teased.

Benny rolled his eyes, settling back further into his seat and taking a long gulp of his beer. “Shut up, Brady,” he muttered.

Brady was undeterred. “She’s not coming, you know,” he added.

Benny’s eyes shot to him. “Why?” he demanded. What did he know that Benny didn’t?

Brady was smirking to himself around his next languid sip of beer. “Because this is the officers’ club and she’s not an officer,” he said simply once he’d finished drinking, then promptly took another sip. Once finished, he placed his glass back down on the table and glanced at Benny, then laughed at whatever he found on his face. “Y’know, like how she doesn’t eat with us in the officers’ mess,” Brady went on. “Because she’s not an officer. Same reason why the mechanics are never in here. You’re her ticket in here every night, Benny.”

“But on her birthday -” Benny began, because he distinctly remembered watching Ollie dance with Lemmons.

Brady shrugged. “Ollie organised officers to get them in. She knew no one else would think to do it, so she asked around. But that’s why they weren’t all in here on her birthday, only her closest friends. She couldn’t get them all in.”

Benny was an idiot. A total, class A idiot.

“I told her I couldn’t pick her up tonight,” Benny said dumbly. “I thought I’d meet her in here.”

“But from her perspective, you uninvited her,” Brady filled in for him. “So don’t be surprised that she’s not here.”

Benny’s face was all screwed up in a frown. He only noticed when he lifted a hand to rub at his forehead and found his eyebrows scrunched together. Loosening the tension in his face and his body, he let his hand drop back down into his lap and sighed. “I’m an idiot,” he lamented.

Brady laughed. “I actually think it might be a good thing for you two to get some space. Well,” he amended, “for you, specifically.”

Benny raised a sceptical eyebrow as he glanced sidelong at Brady.

Again, Brady laughed. “Look, Benny, I don’t know what it is that’s going on inside your head, but I know you like her. And I know you’ve come up with some genius reason as to why it’s a bad idea for you to act on it. But look around, Benny. You’ve got a room full of beautiful women here, so go dance with one and then come back here and see if you can tell me with a straight face that you had the same thing with her that you do when you dance with Ollie.”

Benny didn’t know what to say.

Brady watched him quietly for a moment and then shrugged. “I’m getting another drink.”

Benny thought this over for a good five minutes before he decided there was value in the suggestion. He didn’t like the thought of it, no, but there was value in it. Because there were a lot of pretty women in here tonight, it was true, and not once had the thought so much as crossed his mind that he might dance with one of them. So if he was really going to go ahead with this whole not ruining the friendship thing, maybe it really was high time he started acting like it.

There was a group of wireless operator girls standing by the bar when he approached to drop off his empty beer glass, and while he left Meatball under the care of one of them, he asked another one to dance.

She said yes, of course, as he’d known she would. Her name was Amy and it wasn’t so much that she had eyes for him but that she had eyes for everyone. She was an easy target, really, and Benny didn’t feel good about it, but she was pretty and clearly liked him so she seemed a good place to start.

And she was unexpectedly smart, too, he found when he was dancing with her. Perceptive. She asked him interesting questions about his job and genuinely listened to his answers. But there was still something not quite right about the whole thing, something that felt intrinsically wrong, so when the song ended he let her go back to her friends and he went to get another drink.

After that drink, he tried again, this time with an ops room girl. He didn’t know her name and realised, halfway through dancing with her, that he’d forgotten to ask, but he was too embarrassed to admit as much so far into their conversation. So, when the song was up, he let her go, too, and found an ATA pilot instead.

This pilot was chatty and it was fun to dance with her. Alice was her name. And she liked to dance fast and didn’t much care whether she looked good while doing it, which Benny liked, but she didn’t laugh loudly when he spinned her, and she didn’t tip her head back when she did laugh, and she didn’t have that half-innocent half-mischievous look in her eyes that Benny realised halfway through their dance he’d been accidentally searching for. And she didn’t smell sweet, like flowers, but muskier, something more sensual and mature. And when Benny joked about Blakeley and how bad his dancing was, she didn’t joke back, just smiled and said that she thought Blakeley was a good dancer, actually. And when Benny made a darker joke, something stupid about how strange it was that they all carried on like this in the midst of a war, she didn’t laugh, the way Ollie would have, but smiled tightly and looked away.

And, in the end, it just wasn’t right. The same as it hadn’t been with any of the others. He wasn’t even right, when paired with them. He caught himself putting on some sort of mask, showboating as some version of himself that was funnier and sharper and more interesting in a way that got exhausting, after a while, because it wasn’t really him.

Benny retired from the party early, bored with himself and with everyone else and with the whole night. There was no point even being there if Ollie wasn’t coming, and he knew by now that she wasn’t. And even if she did, it would mean she had come on someone else’s arm, probably Bucky’s, and he didn’t want to be there to see that, didn’t want to have to sit there and watch them dance and wonder at what point they’d be going outside to kiss and maybe more.

Instead, Benny got himself and Meatball ready for bed and lay awake in an otherwise empty hut, staring into the darkness and only vaguely making out the ceiling. And he thought of lots of things, and none of them were appropriate, but they all had the same focal point. Bright blue eyes, light brown hair, a lacy little nightdress and a wide smile which lit up her entire face. Until he did something that made her smile turn into a soft gasp, made her hands tighten in his hair, made her arch into him on his lap. Until the thought of her moaning his name had him mumbling hers over and over again into the silence of the night. “Ollie,” he whispered, moving faster, his voice strained like she had a physical hold on him. “Ollie. Ollie.”

***

Benny made a point to re-invite Ollie to the club the next night. There was no way he was enduring all that again. And the club was packed full in a way it hadn’t been yesterday, or maybe it just felt more alive because Ollie was back in it. Either way, there weren’t enough chairs for everyone, so Ollie was sitting on his lap.

Meatball was at their feet and Ollie was fussing over him, as she always did, stroking his head and caressing his cheeks and smiling widely when he offered her his paws every now and again. “Aw, thank you, little one,” she would say every time, shaking his paw like she might shake someone else’s hand before she let it go. “That’s very kind of you.”

Benny watched all of it with a grin and a hand resting on one of her thighs, the other holding his beer to his lips so the guys wouldn’t tease him for his expression.

After a little while she turned to him, and Benny knew he must have lit up under her gaze because hers softened. She laughed a little bit. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she informed him. “Do you want me to refill you whilst I’m up?”

Benny raised his eyebrows at her. “When have I ever made you pay for a drink?”

Rolling her eyes, Ollie laughed. “You have so little faith in me, Benny.” She got to her feet and held out a hand for his empty glass. “I don’t pay. I just ask.”

“And they give it to you?” He shifted once in his seat, bristling.

Ollie shrugged. “If I’m by myself. And if not the barmen, then someone else standing by the bar will pay.”

Benny shook his head, moving to stand. “I’ll pay -”

“Why?” she cut across him, laughing. “If I go, it’ll be free.”

“It’s not free,” Benny said, rising to his feet. “Someone’s paying for it, just not me.”

“Exactly!” she chirped. “I’m saving you money, Benny, you should be thanking me.”

“Ha,” he said, unimpressed. “I’d rather pay than make you flirt for drinks, Ollie.”

She nudged him playfully. “I don’t flirt,” she informed him matter-of-factly. “I just stand there and look pretty.”

Benny opened his mouth to say something else but Dougie cut across him. “Oh, come on, Benny, let her flirt for free drinks - what’s the harm? And if you’re offering, Ollie, I’ll take a whiskey -”

“Shut up, Dougie,” Benny huffed. “Flirt for your own drinks.”

“I don’t flirt!” Ollie insisted, grinning, amused. “And I’m not standing around having this conversation any longer.” She turned to Benny decisively, laying a hand on his arm to draw his eyes back to her. “Benny, drink or no drink? You have five seconds to decide, because after that I’m going to the bathroom.”

With a tiny smile tucked away in the corner of his mouth, Benny breathed a laugh. “Go to the bathroom, Ollie,” he told her, slipping a hand around her waist. “I’ll get your drink.”

“But it’s free if I get it,” she reminded him, grinning cheekily.

He ducked his head towards hers, smiling wider now. When he spoke, it was softly, so only she could hear him, and his smile was indulgent, like a doting parent, his hand on her waist gentle like a lover’s. “And I’d rather pay, alright?”

She gazed back at him silently for one beat, two, before laughing softly and taking a step back. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But don’t say I never tried to do anything for you.” With that, she turned on her heel to head for the bathroom. 

For a moment, Benny forgot where he was, because he stood there stupidly staring after her up until she disappeared from his view.

“So that’s going well,” Brady declared sarcastically into the silence which followed.

“Yep, looks super platonic to me, Benny,” Dougie agreed.

“Just -” Benny shook his head, retrieving Ollie’s empty glass from the table. “Watch Meatball for me, alright?” With that, he headed for the bar.

***

Hours later, Ollie was back in his lap, and she was talking to Crank about movies.

“You didn’t like The Maltese Falcon?!” she was gasping, wide-eyed and accusatory.

Crank laughed. “I mean, it was alright! I didn’t realise you were so passionate about it!”

“I watched it four times,” she replied pointedly.

Benny scoffed. “What’s in it that you gotta watch it four times?”

“Um, Humphrey Bogart,” Ollie replied, as though this should have been obvious. “I watched Pride and Prejudice nine times just because of Laurence Olivier.”

Benny was grinning. “So she’s got a thing for movie stars,” he teased.

“She’s got a thing for Laurence Olivier, definitely,” Ollie replied. “He’s in Rebecca, too, and he’s just -” She cut herself off, clutching her chest and tipping her head back and groaning to communicate how attractive she thought he was.

Crank laughed.

Benny started sweating.

“It is so desperately sad that he’s married to Vivien Leigh,” Ollie went on, oblivious, “but then again, she was so gorgeous as Scarlett O’Hara. And, oh my god, isn’t she just the luckiest woman in the world? She gets to kiss Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind and now she’s coming home every night to Laurence Olivier.” Ollie leaned back into Benny with a dramatic, dreamy sigh. “I want to come back as Vivien Leigh in the next life.”

Benny hoped she couldn’t feel the racing of his heart beneath her shoulder.

“Well, what did you think of The Wizard of Oz, Ollie?” Crank asked next. “No one in that for you to ogle, so how many times did you see it?”

The whole time she was speaking, Benny was overwhelmingly aware of her position on his lap and the familiarity of it when compared with what he’d thought about last night, and what he’d done in response. Every time she shifted, either to gain more leverage to make her point or else to get more comfortable, she was putting Benny in an increasingly compromising position, until he had no choice but to lay both of his hands down on her hips to keep her still.

If she noticed, Ollie didn’t say anything.

There was sweat gathering at the edges of Benny’s forehead, heat creeping up the back of his neck until it itched.

That was why, when one of the newly arrived airmen came over, bold as brass and smirking, and asked Ollie to dance, Benny was more focused on her getting up off of his lap than he was on what was happening to cause it.

By the time he registered it, it was too late. Her hand was already in the new guy’s, ready to follow him to the dance floor.

“You’re gonna let him take your girl like that, Benny?” Hambone teased.

Benny would have snarked at the teasing, but actually there was truth to the sentiment that he shouldn’t let that slide. Because for a new guy to march up to one of the veteran pilots and ask the girl sitting on his lap to dance was a statement. It was disrespectful. And now Benny didn’t know what to do about it.

Ollie spoke for him, in the end. “I’ll save a dance for Benny, of course,” she answered Hambone, then gave Benny a winning smile. “If he wants,” she added a beat later.

Benny’s smile was tight. “Good of you,” he acknowledged.

Ollie’s eyebrows furrowed but her smile didn’t falter. “I always save a dance for you,” she reminded him.

Behind her, the airman gave her hand a tug. “Yeah, well, maybe later. Come on, doll, song’s starting.” With that, he pulled her in the direction of the dance floor and left everyone else behind.

Doll. The term of endearment left such a bad taste in Benny’s mouth he had to wash it away with beer. And, when that didn’t work, he washed it away with whiskey. One dance turned into two and Benny didn’t like that one bit.

“Damn,” he heard Dougie muttering to Hambone from a few seats down. “First Bucky, now a new guy.” He whistled lowly. “Maybe Benny really don’t like her.”

Benny’s face soured. That had been what he’d wanted, of course, way back when they’d first met. For Ollie to go off and find someone else. But things were different now, and he didn’t want that anymore, and on this side of things it didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel right. And when he glanced over his shoulder and saw the new guy’s hands sinking low on Ollie’s back, his grip on his glass became so tight he was surprised it didn’t shatter.

But it was because he was watching, because of how closely he was watching, that Benny was the first one to notice when things started to go south. Because he knew Ollie, and he’d never seen her tense up while dancing like that - not with him, with Bucky, with Lemmons, with anyone. And he didn’t know what the new guy was saying, but he could see the side of Ollie’s face where she’d tilted her head to listen to him and she certainly wasn’t smiling.

She shook her head as she turned back to him, dropped her hand from his shoulder but he wouldn’t let her go. Instead, he pulled her tighter to him, and Benny turned to put down his glass. When he turned back to check on the situation, the two of them were gone.

Benny panicked for all of a moment before Ollie’s voice reached him over the music. He followed the sound to her, to where she was being dragged towards the door. “I told you no!” she was insisting, trying to tug her wrist free of his grip. “Let go of me!”

In an instant, Benny was on his feet and halfway over there, elbowing people out of the way and calling out a, “Hey!”

Brady was hot on his heels, laying a hand on his shoulder to remind him to keep his cool.

“Get off me!” Ollie was saying as the new guy dragged her down the hallway to the door. Her heels gave her no grip on the floor, no leverage to push against him.

Benny picked up his pace. “Hey!” he shouted, speeding down the hallway towards them. “Get your fuckin’ hands off her!”

He didn’t see Ollie, not while his eyes were zeroed on where the new guy was yanking her, but he heard her voice. “Benny,” she breathed, relieved.

The guy didn’t let go of her. “Yeah?” he told Benny. “Or fuckin’ what? What are you gonna do about it, DeMarco, huh?” He turned to face him, holding Ollie back against his chest, and while he held Benny’s gaze with a sordid glint in his eye, his free hand inched up from Ollie’s waist, heading for her chest.

Benny’s arm swung back.

Ollie beat him to it.

All at once the man crumpled, face contorted in such a way that Benny didn’t have to see what she’d done to know. That was a universal expression, a universal pain - well, amongst men, anyway.

Before anyone had expected it of her, she’d turned and kneed the guy in the groin.

“Fuck!” the guy was crying out, knees bent together, hands clenched over the vulnerable area. “Fucking bitch!”

“I told you to get off me!” Ollie said, taking stumbling steps back as she stared at him like she couldn’t believe what she’d done.

That was okay. Benny was there to catch her when she bumped into him, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her steady, turning her to face him. “Hey, are you alright?” he asked, laying a hand on her cheek and checking for damage, curling the other around her waist.

Ollie’s hands found his arms. Her lips were ajar, her eyes wide. Confused. Disoriented.

In shock.

“I just…” she mumbled.

“He’ll be fine,” Benny assured her - though, in reality, he hoped he wouldn’t. He hoped he’d never be able to have kids, since he thought it was so okay to go around forcing himself upon women. “Are you okay?” he insisted, nodding briefly in acknowledgment to Brady as he hauled the new guy out the door, presumably to the infirmary.

She didn’t reply, just stared at him.

“Ollie,” Benny insisted softly, rubbing his thumb across her cheek. “Are you with me? Are you alright?” He held her a little closer, ducked his face down towards hers. “You want me to take you home?” he asked. “Or you wanna go outside? Or -”

Ollie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, and all at once she was gasping in heaving breaths. She shook her head more rapidly. “I don’t know, I -”

At the first sign of tears, Benny had her cradled to his chest, elbowing the door open and leading her out into the quiet of the night. “Alright,” he was mumbling to her, his lips in her hair, “you’re alright, Ollie, come on, I’ve got you.”

Once the door was shut behind them, Benny led her around the side of the building to where they wouldn’t be disturbed. He leaned back against the wall and, in turn, Ollie leaned into him, held on tighter to him. Through a voice shaky and wet with tears, she started saying, “I’m sorry, it’s stupid, he didn’t even really do anything. I don’t know why I’m crying -”

Benny sighed, lifting a hand to bury in the back of her hair, holding her closer to him. “You’re shaken up, Ollie,” he assured her softly. “And you’re allowed to be.” He shook his head, setting his eyes on the building opposite him and resting his chin on her head, his jaw working. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I shoulda been protecting you, not letting stupid guys put their hands all over you.”

Ollie’s answering laugh was quiet and sniffly and just a little bit sad. “You did protect me,” she reminded him, her voice thick with lingering tears. “You got him to stop. And if he didn’t stop then -”

Benny didn’t even want to think about the possibility of it. “I would never have let that happen.”

“I know.” She sniffled, then let out a little sob, and nuzzled closer to him. “You never let anything bad happen to me,” she whispered.

His smile was soft, indulgent, rueful, as he pressed his lips to the top of her hair. “Something bad happening to you might just kill me, Ollie.”

She sniffled once more, then withdrew her face from his shoulder, peering up at him through the darkness.

His eyes had adjusted just enough by now that he could make out hers gazing up at him, though he thought he’d probably be able to seek her eyes out anywhere, in any setting and under any conditions. A blackout was far from enough to stop him from looking at her.

There was a small, sad smile on her lips, and he felt it like a kick to the gut.

“You’re such a good friend, Benny,” she whispered.

The word made his chest hurt, like it was too small to accommodate his heart’s beating. He swallowed hard. There was a lump in the back of his throat that was making it impossible to breathe.

“My best friend,” she added.

Her eyes were flickering between both of his, her hands curled around his biceps. The hold he had on her waist went slack, the strength leaving his body along with all the life in it.

Briefly, quickly, her eyebrows twitched, bowing to her eyes and then flicking back up again, a momentary glimpse of sorrow. Indeed, it was so quick that Benny might have wondered if he’d even seen it at all if he didn’t know himself better, didn’t know her better, didn’t know how close he was always, always watching her.

“Am I your best friend?” she asked, tentative, as though she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answer. Her eyes were wide, innocent, as they searched his for an affection she’d never before had to search for because it had always just been there, even before they’d met.

She was making it impossible for him to go on living like this. She must have known it too. And if this was what she’d felt at the start, when she’d taken one look at him and fallen in love and he’d let her down in a million small ways, he didn’t want either of them to feel anything anywhere close to it ever again. It was torture. Agony.

It was unbearable.

He’d intended to be smooth about it, but he never really had managed to get himself under control around her. She had this thing about her that unmasked him, stripped him down to his barest bones just by being in her presence but made it worth his while, after all, when she made him feel like that was the best way he could be.

So he wasn’t cool and collected and smooth, and the kiss he pressed to her lips wasn’t romantic and charming and beautiful. His aim was off, in fact, and he ended up missing her bottom lip entirely, catching only her top one. And his eyes were squeezed tight shut, because if he was making a terrible mistake he didn’t want to see it, and he wasn’t even sure that he was gentle.

It was an awful first kiss, really.

When he let her go, accepting defeat, all he could do was stare at her dumbly, eyes wide, jaw agape. And all he could say was, “Sorry.”

Ollie’s eyes were similarly wide, her jaw similarly agape. “What are you doing, Benny?” she asked.

His stomach rolled. He shook his head. “I think,” he started, then stumbled and started anew, “For a while now, I think I -”

Ollie put him out of his misery, holding up a hand to stop him. “Benny, don’t do this.”

He froze. He was sure even the blood stopped running in his veins. “What?” he breathed.

Ollie looked away from him, staring down the alley as she wiped away the smudged makeup beneath her eyes. There was a rueful twist to her lips which wasn’t quite a smile. “Don’t do this to me,” she repeated. “It’s unkind.”

He blinked at her. “What’s unkind?”

“This,” she said, turning back to him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she’d not quite managed to wipe away all of the black smudges. She crossed her arms across her chest as though to protect herself. From him. “I’m not a dolly, Benny,” she said sharply. “You don’t just get to pick me up and play with me when you want me and then put me down again when you’re finished.”

Benny shook his head dumbly. “I don’t understand. Ollie, I -”

She had no interest in hearing whatever stupid excuse was about to come out of his mouth. “You know, Benny,” she said, hugging herself tighter, “the only reason this friendship between us works at all is because you’re kind. ‘Big-hearted Benny DeMarco’, you know, who’s always sweet and thoughtful and good. That’s why this works. Always near, never together - it works because you’re kind about it.” She huffed, agitated, turned around as if to walk away and then turned right back again. “But right now, doing that -” Her voice cracked on the word, as though even the memory of it appalled her. “That’s not kind. You’re not being kind to me.”

He could not for the life of him understand how he’d screwed this up so bad. “Ollie, please, I’m trying to tell you -”

“What, Benny?!” Ollie cried. “You’re trying to tell me what?! That you’re in love with me?! I’m not stupid and I don’t believe you. Why would I? The entire time we’ve known each other you have made it clear to me again and again that you don’t want me like that, so why would I believe you when -”

“Because I’m telling you!” Benny cut across her, laughing entirely without humour in frustration and disbelief. “Or I’m trying to, at least, if you would just hold on for a second and let me!” He huffed, shaking his hands out of leftover adrenaline. “God, Ollie, people are allowed to take more than a second to fall in love, you know? It didn’t happen for me immediately, you’re right, and I’m sorry for that, but that doesn’t mean it was never gonna happen at all! It’s been completely out of my control the whole damn time, same as it was for you, and I honestly don’t know what to tell you to make you believe me other than it’s true and I love you and I’m sorry it took me this long but I do. I really, really do.”

Ollie’s hands were fluttering, as though grasping at the air for a reply. “Well, since when?” she demanded of him at last. “When did you first know?”

He shook his head, hands reaching for his hair to give it a frustrated tug. “I don’t know!” he exclaimed. “I could say it was the day in your hut, when you had those stomach aches and you fell asleep while I was rubbing your back, but then I think about the first time you checked over Bucky’s plane before mine and I know there was something there even then. But I didn’t think about it at the time.”

Ollie laughed darkly. “So this is about Bucky,” she said.

“No!” he exclaimed, then faltered. “Well, actually, kind of -” She laughed again and he clenched his hands into fists and pressed them into his eyes, because this was going so very wrong. “Not in the way you’re thinking!” he hurried to add, then dropped his hands back to his sides. “What I mean is: you’re right. At the start, I did know what you felt for me. And I didn’t feel it back. But then at some point, and I don’t know exactly when, I know I felt it too but I didn’t wanna think about it, because I knew I’d taken too long and you were doing whatever with Bucky, so what was I supposed to think, you know? That you were just messing around while you waited for me? I’m not that conceited, Ollie. I’ve never given you any reason to wait around for me -”

“I didn’t need a reason, Benny!” Ollie exclaimed. “In fact, you gave me a whole lot of reasons not to, but I couldn’t help it!”

“But how was I supposed to know that, Ollie?! How was I supposed to know what the hell you felt while you were running around with Bucky? You kept being late to see me before wheels up because you were with him, blew me off for dances to go dance with him, and then on your birthday you tell me you’ve been fuckin’ kissing him and you expected me to interpret that as you still - still feeling - y’know, whatever, for me?” He was stumbling over his words, couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘love’ as though he was entitled to it from her.

“I expected you to know me, Benny,” Ollie hissed. “The way everyone else seems to. Because everyone else has known the whole time.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Well, you should’ve.”

“Then I guess I’m just stupid, huh?” Benny said, throwing his hands up and turning away from her. “I guess I’m just a fucking idiot who can’t see what’s right in front of him and accidentally uninvited you to the club yesterday and accidentally realised way too late what he feels and accidentally made you think I didn’t want you.” He shook his head, slumped back against the wall, tilted his head back to rest against it. Shutting his eyes, he breathed out a long slow breath into the air above him, as though it could string his breath into a sentence full of words that would make this all okay again. “Couldn’t be fuckin’ further from the truth,” he muttered under his breath, not caring anymore whether she could hear him.

Silence fell between them. Only the sound of Benny’s breathing and the muffled music from the club broke it, and even then only distantly.

Ollie’s heart was racing. Her face was hot. There was some sort of rushing sound in her ears, some sort of fluttering in her stomach. “Benny,” she said simply.

Benny didn’t move, didn’t even open his eyes to glance at her. “What?”

Ollie watched him refusing to look at her and rolled her eyes. “Benny,” she insisted.

He huffed, but finally he tipped his head down and opened his eyes to look at her. “What, Ollie?”

She frowned. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

He stared at her for a moment and then sighed. Lifted a hand to rub at his eyes. “Sorry,” he relented. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of having a tough night.”

Ollie smiled faintly. “Well, I’ve had my fair share of those.”

“Right.” He didn’t smile, really, just did a poor impression of one before looking away again.

Silently, Ollie sighed. “Benny,” she said again, “I just wanted to tell you something.”

“Hm?” he asked. His head was resting against the wall again, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance towards the end of the alleyway.

Ollie’s patience failed her. “Damn it, Benny, would you look at me?!”

Benny gave a sad little laugh and shook his head, so that his hair rubbed up against the wall and came loose from its pomade at the back. “Ollie, if I look at you right now I think I might throw up.”

“Charming,” Ollie drawled.

He barked a surprised laugh. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

She shook her head. “You mean it’s hard for you to look at me because of what you… feel for me?” she ventured.

He swallowed hard but didn’t otherwise move.

That was all the confirmation she needed.

She drew in a deep breath, then let it all go at once. Now or never. “Well, maybe if you were really brave and you looked at me anyway, I could tell you that I don’t think it’s too late,” she said.

It took him a moment, but his eyes found her eventually.

She’d always known they would.

“You didn’t realise too late,” she explained. Then added, “Well -”

His laugh cut her off.

She grinned back at him. “You could’ve realised a bit sooner,” she allowed. She shrugged. “Would’ve been nice, I suppose. Would’ve saved me quite a bit of heartache.”

“Well,” he replied, pushing up off the wall, “I’ve had my fair share of that.” His eyes were glinting, amused at himself for echoing her words back to her.

Ollie rolled her eyes.

“But all of this is just to say…” she started, and faltered as he neared her. She never had been able to keep her train of thought when he was near. Especially not when he was looking at her like that.

“That you think you might be able to try to love me again?” he finished for her, ever hopeful.

With a short laugh, Ollie pushed up on her tiptoes, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and yanked him towards her. “Did you miss the whole conversation where I said I never stopped?”

“Think I might’ve gotten lost in your eyes,” he teased.

She scoffed. “Think you might’ve heard too many big words and -”

He kissed her once again, but it was better this time. And longer. And when they broke apart for a hasty, gasping breath, all crowded up against the wall and sweating and alive, Benny took one look at Ollie and shook his head, grinning. “Don’t say it.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say!”

“I know you -”

She kissed the rest of the sentence out of his mouth, giggled into it instead, and gasped when he picked her up, pressed her against the wall, kissed her harder.

“Don’t know how the fuck I’ve gone my whole life without this,” Benny mumbled between long, searing kisses, clutching at every inch of her he could get his hands on.

Ollie’s hands were tangled up in his hair, her head tipped back as he mouthed at her throat. “Yeah, well, I tried to warn you,” she said, her voice more breath than words.

Benny groaned even as he laughed, pressing himself closer to her. “God, don’t remind me.”

***

It had been almost two years since Ollie had last seen Benny. Well, in person, that was. Every night before bed and every morning before she got up she opened the locket he’d given her to look at the picture of them he’d put in it. And, of course, there was the picture of him she had stuck up on the wall above her bed frame, in his crusher cap and aviator sunglasses, looking unbearably handsome as he stood beside his plane. And, too, she always made sure to spend at least a little while every night standing beside the framed photograph hung up in the officers’ club of the first wave of American airmen who’d invaded Thorpe Abbotts. There was Benny, front row with Meatball, aviators on and grinning at the camera.

The funny thing was, that photograph was the only reason she was allowed into the officers’ club these days. Well, that and Croz and Jack were both majors now, and they knew her and had known Benny and made sure she was allowed in even though she wasn’t an officer. So the boys on the door, different ones now to who they had been before, let her in every night without a word so she could stand with the photograph, talking to Benny the way he’d told her in his letters he talked to the photos of her he had pinned up next to his bed in the stalag, asking after his day and hoping she’d receive a letter soon in which he could actually tell her.

It was summer again now, the way it had been when they’d first met. Two winters, two springs, one autumn, and one and a half summers without him, and yet the ache felt as fresh as the flowers blooming in the fields. She knew he was alive now, at least. Far away, yes, but alive. And she never in her life wanted to relive the experience of not knowing whether he was or not, like in those first few weeks after his plane had gone down when no one had known quite what to say.

Now, the air was warm again, and there were whispers that the war was ending. Ollie wasn’t sure whether she believed them - it wasn’t her job, really, to know whether they were winning, just to make sure as many of the planes as possible came back. And her heart hadn’t been in it ever since she’d stopped needing to check over Benny’s plane before every flight. It hadn’t saved him in the end, anyway. The bastard thing had still gone down.

But she’d made friends even while she’d lost some, had cut her hair and then grown it, had tried smoking and then stopped and then started again, and she even looked after Meatball again, now. At first she hadn’t even really been able to take care of herself, so one of the wireless operators had taken him in, but he was back with her now, lying out in the sunshine like a happy cat while she tinkered away at a B-17 on the hardstand.

Buck Cleven had been back for a few weeks now. He’d been flying with Benny as his co-pilot when their plane had gone down and Ollie had never really forgiven him for it. Still, she was polite to him upon his return, and he told her all about what had happened that horrible, horrible day, the last time she’d seen Benny, then told her about Benny and how he was holding up in the camp, and assured her that he was missing her everyday.

“When’s he coming home, Buck?” Ollie had asked, tired and lost and still so sad. She felt that she was missing a part of her, an integral one, like a lung or a part of her brain or heart. There was a gaping inside of her, an emptiness. “Does he remember he has to come here first? If he goes back to America without seeing me I’ll kill him.”

Buck had laughed at that. “Ollie, I don’t think Benny even remembers he’s from America,” he’d told her. “When he talks about home, he talks about you. He’s coming here first, I promise.”

Ollie dreamed of that every night and it still hadn’t happened.

But, as she had learned when Benny had first told her he loved her, things she thought were true did not always remain so.

And today, which was any other day, really, Benny was coming home.

He was antsy in the jeep which he’d barrelled into with Brady and Bucky and Murph and as many of the guys as they could cram into it. The first in the line up, so he’d be the first to see his girl, while the boys in the jeep behind them complained that when he stood up to try to look for her they couldn’t see ahead of them.

Thorpe Abbotts looked exactly as it had the day Benny had arrived; endless fields of green and flowers blooming in them, planes on the hardstand and people in uniform buzzing around, always acting like they had somewhere to be.

Today, Benny had somewhere to be, and it wasn’t the mess hall, like some of the other guys were saying was their first stop.

No, he had a sneaking suspicion his date was set to take place on the hardstand, and as soon as his jeep slowed to a stop he was on his way there.

He must have looked a sight, since he hadn’t been able to shave for a while and his hair had grown out a little this past winter. His clothes were all dirty, too, and he was thinner beneath them, less muscle than she would remember. But maybe she was different too - she’d told him about her haircut and how she didn’t like it so she was growing it back out, had told him about how she didn’t paint her nails anymore and how she’d only realised after he’d gone down that she must have been doing it for him without even knowing it. And he certainly wouldn’t love her any less for any of the changes she’d made since he’d seen her last.

He hoped she’d feel the same.

True to how he had always imagined it, she was tinkering away at a plane on the hardstand when he first laid eyes on her. He couldn’t call out to her the way he had in his daydreams, since she was standing on a ladder so she could fiddle with one of the engines and he didn’t want to startle her into falling off, but he picked up his pace and his smile became so wide it hurt. And when he got close enough Meatball barked once, and then Benny was sprinting.

He greeted Meatball quietly, trying not to alert Ollie to his presence. It wasn’t hard, really, even with Meatball’s loudness, because when she was working on a plane she was so focused she could have been on fire and still not noticed. 

But then he came up behind her and made sure he was there to catch her when he greeted her, “Hi,” and, inevitably, she fell.

She was gasping as she clutched at his neck, staring, uncomprehending, at his face. And her hair was a little bit shorter but not much, but she’d cut it a while ago now. He was struck otherwise by the familiarity of her, the beauty of her, by how his chest suddenly felt big enough for his lungs again and his heart felt like it could continue its beating.

Benny was smiling sheepishly, wondering for a moment whether she even recognised him like this. He knew he looked bad.

“Benny?” she whispered, reaching out a hand to touch his face as though she expected it to pass right through him. As though seeing a ghost.

“Hi, baby,” he whispered back, setting her down gently on her feet. “I’ve been missing you a whole lot,” he went on, keeping hold of her around the waist. He wondered, distantly, if she could feel his hands shaking with adrenaline. “Did you miss me?”

“Are you real?” she breathed.

He laughed softly. “I’m real, I promise.” He took one of her hands and placed it over his heart so she could feel its beating. It was pounding so hard he could hear it, wondered if she could, too. It made sense, he supposed, that suddenly it had burst back to life - it belonged to her, after all. “Couldn’t keep you waiting on me, could I?” he added, his eyes stuck to the emotion in hers. “Already made you do that once, and you were real mad at me for it, if I remember.”

The light of recognition filled her face. Her eyes lit up like Christmas lights he hadn’t gotten to see in a couple of years, and then filled with tears. “Benny?” she asked again.

“Hi, Ollie,” he whispered, and caught her when she threw herself at him. And the smell of her, that floral perfume mixed with a hint of oil, that was home, more than any other home he’d ever known. He hadn’t been able to imagine it properly in the stalag but that didn’t matter now, he had the real thing to breathe in and hopefully in no short supply.

“I love you,” she gasped as she wept, clutching at him tightly, as though she could fuse the two of them together.

He buried his face in her hair and held her closer, fighting his own sting of tears. “I love you too,” he assured her, planting kisses all up and down her shoulders so he wouldn’t have to let go to kiss her. “And I wanted to ask a favour, if it’s alright by you.”

“Anything,” she assured him, pressing impossibly closer.

Benny smiled, pressing a firm kiss to the side of her head. “Marry me?” he asked in a whisper.

The kiss she pressed against his lips was firm and insistent and a ‘yes’ if ever he’d heard one. Still, she told him verbally, too, about a million times over, and kept her hands twined into his hair as she kissed all over his face.