#nonetheless!

Or, it would have been the only way, if she hadn’t seemingly lost some of that finely drilled decorum earlier, practically leaping into his arms like they were kids again, anyway. That had been all too real — her arms around his neck and her body flush against his. The grin in her voice, the way the smile didn’t fade even as she returned to her actual duty for the afternoon — that doesn’t include humoring the unauthorized visit of an aircrew, Wilcox — maybe he shouldn’t have, but Ev was already halfway to scheming what it might take to land an authorized visit to Bournemouth while Ellie was receiving this gentle chastisement, but that had been before the winked addendum — Not before you’ve seen to your actual charges, anyway.

Not that it stopped him from scheming in the interim between then and now, Doug alternately ribbing and offering suggestions, Via’s odd idioms assuring continued surprise at Ev’s unexpected welcome. Even with everything the hotel had to offer — opulence for the eyes to feast upon, men at play, baths — it wasn’t enough to keep his thoughts from wherever the unknown spot she occupied within it was.

But it had been long enough, apparently, to make him question his lucidity. There’s not much else to account for the way he’d simply come out with I was so in love with you then at the reminiscence they’d immediately engaged in as soon as she found him again, led him to this little sitting room with its wall of dusty books and uncommonly tidy desk, settled them in seats that would’ve seen her knee against his if she hadn’t crossed her legs. There’s no drink to blame it on, after all — he did plan on being back on base in nothing less than four hours and, seeing as he would give anyone on his crew absolute hell if they imbibed too much on this spur of the moment R&R, he certainly wasn’t going to do it himself.

Which means he’s kicking himself in something a little like horror and something a little like — something. Something that makes his heartbeat quicken. Pulse, too.

Hope, maybe.

Anyway, that’s how he’s certain this is real, in the end. The way Eleanor cocks her head, lays her chin in her hand, elbow propped against the high arm of his chair’s twin, laughingly asks, “Only then?” Only Eleanor — the real life flesh and bone Eleanor D. Wilcox — could turn an accidental confession into a teasing joke. Before he can decide if it’s more of a relief or a disappointment, she’s following it up with, “You were about the only one. Most boys in town seemed to take exception to my hair — girls, too — girls more, maybe — as though I have any say over how quickly it tightens into an untameable mess.”

True enough. It was stupid, the way the other kids would make fun of her curly hair, grown all the more wild for the damp Seattle days. It hadn’t mattered to him — at seven, at twelve, at sixteen, at nineteen — she’d only ever been Ellie. And he liked Ellie.

The familiarity of the way she interrupts herself, the apparent mirth radiating from her person, the sprightly tendrils now falling loose from the otherwise kempt victory curls — taken altogether, in concert with a well practiced shoving down of the longing in his chest, means that he — thankfully — can slide something teasing back without missing a beat.

“I hear they regret it now — was it VanLokeren who had the door slammed in his face or Jacobs?”

They do regret it now, in point of fact. Ev can’t think of a single serendipitous meeting with anyone from back home who doesn’t ask about Eleanor first chance they get, the invariable she seeing anyone? always leaving him a little more annoyed with himself for not writing.

Not daring to.

He’s a goddamn lead pilot in a Heavy Bomb Group, for Christ’s sake.

She purses her lips at him, though the effect is somewhat dampened by the way she’s also quite clearly attempting to hold back a smile.

“That was an accident —“

“Not how they tell it.” Bobby McCaden was practically frothing to tell him how your girl — fuck, if that were true — had turned down an unsolicited suitor on her doorstep with an undoubtedly well deserved bloody nose. “Word is you were awfully rude to a kindly intentioned —“

“Okay, so it was on purpose,” she concedes, though he knows perfectly well it wasn’t. He always could talk her into just about anything. The thought makes him grin, which only makes her double down. “I’m perfectly within my rights to close my own front door, Ev. Had he deigned to ask in a public place, I might’ve — would’ve — been more willing to listen, in spite of that incident when we were fourteen.”

VanLokeren, then. They — he and VanLo — had been friends before that idiot had nearly frozen Eleanor to death with buckets of ice water in a prank in the midst of the two most bitterly cold weeks of that year’s February. 

“I thought you preferred to let bygones be bygones, Darling.”

If he’s smiling now, it’s only because she hasn’t.

It feels…karmic that VanLokeren had gotten a bloody nose then and now (or recently, anyway).

“For friends, maybe — for a future beau, I think I’m allowed to hold out for someone who didn’t think I was beneath him in our formative years, Ernie.” Oh, he should’ve seen that one coming. The edge of his lip curls in a certain measure of distaste. “Don’t make that face — you know I’m entitled to do what you do to me back to you.”

“Of course you are,” he agrees. There’s nothing for it but to agree, of course, because she’s right and yet — “There’s a difference in your middle name and mine, though — Darling’s an endearment; Ernie’s old man Miller on 19th ranting about the second coming and threatening to sic his dog on you for daring to ride past his driveway. Like he doesn’t live in the middle of the goddamn street.”

Eleanor tilts her head in consideration, like she’s not going to have a perfectly reasonable retort for that. True to form, she leans over her arm rest conspiratorially, “Or Ernie’s a well known, respectable journalist currently reporting in from the Mediterranean.”

He props his elbow on his own arm rest, brings his face level with hers, locks eyes with her for a long moment. They’re close like this, close enough that he’d hardly have to lean forward to —

“You think many people really call him that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” She laughs, falling back into her seat, “It’s his name.”

“Yeah, but he’s also Ernie Pyle.” He retreats back to his prior posture, too, but lifts his hand in illustration, as though he were reading from a name tag, “Ernie Pyle, all one word.”

“He’s more than just a byline in a paper, Ev. He’s got friends and relatives same as me and you.”

“And enemies, you think?”

The teasing question is such a thinly veiled reference to VanLo that she can’t help retorting, “He’s not an en—“ before catching herself and smacking his arm with the back of her hand, albeit  good naturedly. “God, you’re so annoying.”

“Aw, come on,” he says, catching her hand. He shouldn’t, but that doesn’t stop him from adding, “You love me, Elle.”

Her eyes narrow at him, fingers tapping lightly at his hand as though she’s — what? Testing it out?

Maybe he ought to have the resident doc check his head.

“Fine. I do,” she says, lifting their hands as though to force them both to look, though she doesn’t quite seem to see them. “But only because my mother would be devastated if I didn’t.”

“She could commiserate with mine,” he shrugs, releasing her hand, though he’d really rather not. 

He can’t say that he knew for sure what coming here was going to be like, but it certainly wasn’t this. Quiet only settles over them for a moment or two, that infinitely familiar smile of hers directed down at her lap and maybe she hadn’t expected this, either. Running into him, he means — that she’s working here hardly surprises him. She’d always been good at listening, doing for others. She could hardly be elsewhere.

But he hasn’t seen her in so long. And, sure, they’d already asked, but truthfully — there’s the surface. And there’s what’s beneath the cloud deck.

The question comes softly.

“How are you really, Ellie?”

It feels like forever, waiting for her to look up, watching her lips dance in — something.

It kills him a little, not being able to know what she’s thinking just by being right here next to her.

“Same as anyone else, Ev,” she says, at last, eyes still downcast. “Really.” One word, and her eyes snap to his, but she’s not done yet, stops his parting lips from giving any utterance to his thoughts. “You tell me you’re fine and I’ll pretend to believe you about as long as you pretend to believe me.” So all of about ten seconds. “We all do it, of course, but you can’t honestly tell me you’re good over here — up there. You or your crew — your navigator looked more stressed than Mrs. King trying to shepherd the kids to their annual checkups.” Ev’s fairly certain he hasn’t seen said Mrs. King in any state other than pregnant, so the comparison hits a little hard. Croz does seem to sweat more than the average fella — “I’d ask what you’d done to him and your gunners if I didn’t know how stressful the job was on its own.”

They sure train these Red Cross girls up right, he can’t help thinking. Not that he didn’t know as much already, but —

“Thank you.” — it’s nice that they have some understanding of just how rough it is up there. “I mean, you’re right,” he muses, meditating on just how often he bends the throttle. Metaphorically speaking, of course. “If I hadn’t been through it with most of these guys already, I’d definitely be the son of a bitch nobody likes keeping them on form. But you know that.”

There’s that smile, long and slow and soft — the one he’d realized made him strangely weak in the knees on an otherwise perfectly unmemorable day when he was about fourteen — because she did know that. She still knew him, however long it’d been.

“It’s really good to see you, Ev,” she says, beautifully earnest in a way that would’ve been enough to make him fall in love if he hadn’t been plunging headlong for years already. “It’s…it makes me very happy. Really.”

And it means more than all the ribbon and metal he’s earned to adorn his Class As.

“That’s good, since it sounds like I stand a pretty good chance of being accepted with open arms next time I drop by,” he teases, because it’s all too easy to stay in the old familiar rhythm with her. Probably he should’ve seized the moment — like every other GI from here clear over to Australia — but he’s content, for now, to simply thank his lucky stars that Crosby made for such an excellent English tour guide.

“Open arms depends on what they’re carrying when the time comes,” she says, kissing her teeth, “but yes, I do expect you’ll drop by. Frankly, I’d disown you if you didn’t, because you’ve got two years’ worth to tell me about — starting now — and I can’t imagine we’ll finish before you have to go.”

She’s right about that.

And that’s just what he’d expect. A Red Cross girl being a willing ear. Eleanor, quietly demanding to share whatever weight he’s carrying.

His Ellie, wanting to be his Ellie again.

“Wilco, Wilcox.”

“Snap to, Blakely.”

He smiles.