Over There. (Closed for Light Ice)

[MadMissJ]

They were Scarlet Women but not like Nathanial Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne. She walked along the dividing line between the newly arrived American Pilots and each of her crimson caped nurses. First inspecting their hemlines, stockings, their medals for Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. Each apron was to be pined with that distinction, each cap pined to the crown of their heads. She’d stood in her room in front of the mirror that morning, making sure that she looked perfect. From her long red curls pinned up and away from her neckline, her make up, and her shined shoes.

Her nursing staff were staring the boys that filled the side of the room that wasn’t crudely made individual, curtained off stalls. They were in their skivvies, and holding their uniforms. Most of the nurses were having a bit of trouble keeping straight faces, pressing their lips together, or smothering giggles behind hands.

“I am Captain Ailis Macaire, Captain of His Majesties Nursing Corps in here at the front. Which means I outrank, most, if not all of you.” There were titters of appreciation from her staff, and Ailis looked over her shoulder to give the girls a stare as someone said from behind their hand ‘Youngest Officer in the club, she gets all the dances.’ Ailis cleared her throat to end that bit of chatter. “We are all a long way from home ladies and gentleman.” She paused in front of one of the pilots to give him a small smile, the pale freckles across her nose twitched a bit as she attempted a friendly gesture to the troops who seemed to look so much younger than their English counterparts. “This field was just taken weeks ago, and we are among the first regiments to put feet down here in Belguim. Will we stay here? Well, that is up to you boys.” Green eyes scanned the faces again, before stepping back to turn around and walk back down the line.

“If you troops have a problem with the care of my nursing staff, are afraid you’ve been mishandled, please, by all means come to me. And if you nurses, believe you have been mishandled, I expect the same. Men, these ladies are the ones who are clearing you to fly, and will continue to clear you, please remember that.” Backing to the entrance of her aluminum framed, make shift room.

“Atten-tion.” Her Northern-Irish lilt took on a sharper tone and she watched as her nurses and the boys came to attention. “Troops, continue on to your appointed lines! Nurses, to your stations. At ease.” And the collective breath in the room was let out and instantly a din of talking started. The redhead looked up to the first man in her line and made a motion with her hand to encourage his forward motion.

“C’mon along.” It was a bit nerve wracking, this first bit. Her girls hadn’t lied, though perhaps they were jealous of nothing. With the loss of women before her that had made it necessary to promote younger and younger. “Rank and name please?” She asked, picking up a form and a pen, letting out a bit of a nervous breath. “I’ll need you put your uniform on the gurney, so you can grip the side of the bed there and lean over. I’ll be checking you again for Scoliosis.” That was exactly what the English had been fearing with the droves of men who’d signed up to come over, 'over there'. There were strict medical guidelines that they all needed to follow, and the American's had been cleared by their medical team, now it was England’s turn.

 

[Light Ice]

He knew she was beautiful. It was impossible to ignore. Red hair, freckles, the soft shape of her cheekbones and the girlish warmth of her features in a room filled with men so young they were scarcely more than boys. He noticed. And he didn’t ignore it. Instead, he felt numb to it. The cold certainty of this step and every step after the only reality he knew at the moment. That, of course, and the nightmarish procession of everything he’d learned of war in the last couple years. It was 1943 and he was only thirty one – but he may as well have been sixty in comparison to the kids lined up behind him. They’d let him go first because most probably thought he was a Colonel. He wasn’t.

The uniform was immaculately kept, folded, and straightened. He laid it out on the gourney sheets and was eager to be away from this place. Away from her. Away from them. The last six months had been spent in a hospital bed and he was glad to be done with it. The stink of cigarettes and anesthetic were something he would not miss. His shorts were white and high, baggy enough to conceal the heavy length of his cock. Despite his indifference he made a point not to look at her. The soft shape of her lips, the graceful line of her neck, he’d have gotten hard if his attention lingered long. He paid no mind to the younger girl lingering near her. Not that she was old. He doubted she was past twenty five. The girl must have been all of seventeen, and her mouth was wide open.

He knew what she was staring at. They were getting new pilots in, mostly. Of the group, he knew he was the only one who wasn’t green. He imagined Captain Macaire knew she’d have one coming off shore leave and returning to action. She wouldn’t doubt it was him now. The reality of war was that it left its mark on you. He was no different. After six months in England, healing, the scars had faded some. The broad stretch of his chest revealed handsome muscle, a bit of dark hair, and a rippled and narrow abdomen ending in rugged hips. He’d have been handsomer if it wasn’t for what had gotten him back in a medical examination to begin with. The 20mm shell had blown through the cockpit of his B17, taken his co-pilot’s head clean off at the shoulders, and then slammed into the instrument panel behind him to his left before it’d exploded. When it had, it’d thrown him forward into a jagged piece of shrapnel that had pierced him through and had to be surgically removed. A five-inch long gash-like scar of paler skin above his heart remained. The back of his left shoulder was covered in a half-dozen small round holes where the shell’s fragments had been dug out. He also had three larger, neater round holes on the other side where the German sub-machine gun had stitched across his torso. The plane had been ditched in a field in Belgium, not terribly far from where they were now. Only eight months ago it had belonged to Nazi Germany. And the reception that he’d found had been less than friendly. If it hadn’t been for an American Regiment securing a bridge that day he, and his men, would have been killed.


“Captain James MacCleary.” He said.


Outside the screen, all at once, the entirety of the room went quiet. He knew why. Whispers took hold after. Twenty-Five missions. He’d survived twenty-five missions and hadn’t rotated home. Hadn’t rotated out. He’d stayed on the line. He’d heard most of the rumors since his return. Someone had started the story that he’d shot one of his crew in mid-air for failing to obey an order. Either way, by reputation, he was a murderous son of a bitch and was known to love little more than killing Nazis.

He looked down at the Nurse for a moment before reaching and closing his big hands on the rail, his body bent. The rugged strength of him rippling in masculine certainty against a backdrop of skinny boys who hadn’t seen anything, really, to know just what was coming. He remained dead silent for a long while before he spoke in a low, easy breath to the girl that checked him. Ignoring her beauty. But, in perfect gaelic, addressing her beneath his breath.

“Say a prayer for these boys, Miss.” He said.

 

[MadMissJ]

As eager as he was to avoid looking at her, so too was she attempting to avoid looking at him. It seemed a strange sort of dance. This was nothing. This was medical exams, she’d been up to her elbows at incinerators, disposing of rotted flesh, toes, fingers and the like. As a young nurse, her first assignment had been to boil, ring out and put all bandages out to dry. There was no work like that. It took hours upon hours, worked the arms making them feel little more than spaghetti, dropped sweat into the eyes, and you had to round it out by using soap chapped hands to hang them all out to dry. Her fingers for the first few weeks of her service had done nothing but bleed.

However, that had been small time stuff compared to what she’d done later. Cleaning soldiers that were covered in soot and dirt and grime. She’d become familiar with the male body even before she’d had her first kiss. She never blushed anymore, that part of her seemed to be buried beneath years of duty. The body was a tool now, a working set of levers that were put to use in the English war machine. Mechanical and stiff fingers wrote his name at the top of her paper, but in spite of herself, pale green eyes flickered from her forms to look at the back of the man in their private chamber.

“Captain.” She greeted him, getting up to place her form on the bed, next to his pile of clothing. “This inspection won’t take long for you, I expect.” She murmured. Aware of the silence that had accompanied his name, so she lowered her voice to afford him a bit more privacy. His large hands gripped the rail in front of them, and she had the idea that this must seem so futile to him. Standing next to him it was easy to see the scars now, so pale and fresh looking. He’d not been on leave long. Swallowing Ailis took a step behind him, warm fingers taking a hold of the shoulder that was littered with pockmarked shrapnel scars. Her eyes scanned his shoulders, and with a renewed sense of purpose, Captain Macaire touched around the first vertebrae in his back. She had to stand on her tip toes to fully see the way his shoulders were held, a flat palm inching downward slowly.

“I remember you.” She whispered. “It was a few years ago now though. I wasn’t a captain, then. I was stationed in Dover. I changed your bandages for days, reading you the periodicals about how much more glamorous the War in the Pacific was.” The redhead paused with her hand in the middle of his back, massaging at the strange feeling there, it must ache. She wondered if it was due to some internal injury, or if he had a herniated disk. Ailis brought down her other hand, to press her thumbs to either side of the bone, working the muscle, butterflying her fingers out and around his ribs.

“Does that hurt, Captain?” She was concentrating, staring between his shoulder blades. Leaning into him, as he was braced better than she was. “Or have the doctors mentioned anything about trauma to the spine?” She couldn’t press at the muscle forever, and continued downward with both hands, until she reached his hips.

“Say a prayer for these boys, Miss.”

Her face flushed suddenly and unexpectedly at the words in her native language. She’d been surrounded too long by the English and the Americans that the way it sounded was like music from home. Ailis was thankful he couldn’t see her face, as she parted her lips to breathe in a shallow gulp of air.

“I do, every day.” She replied softly almost dreamily, swallowing down the urge to say more. “And its Captain, Captain.” It was a harsh reminder to cut the moment, and said in English. As if the change in language could stomp out the softness that she’d shown. “Please, turn around and sit on the bed if you will.” She prompted, giving into the urge to straighten the cape that settled over her shoulders, stepping between his knees with a light in her hand, and shining it at his eyes.

It was on her mind to ask him why he seemed to have such a suicide wish. She’d seen a few court marshaled cowards who had inflicted great pain on themselves to avoid what he kept coming back to. But that would have been far too personal a question, and she was aware of the time he’d spent in England recovering. Six months he’d had to think about it. Ailis didn’t want to question his resolve now that he was back on the Continent.

“Any problems with your injuries since you’ve gotten here, Captain?” She asked, tilting her head to the side ever so slightly, if her hair had been loose it would have fallen over to one side with the friendly motion. Her fingers stretching forward to touch the pale mark across his chest, dangerously close to his heart.

“Did you pierce the heart?” She asked, quieter than before as she looked into his eyes and then back down again, pulling her hand away, running down the length of her service apron. “I wouldn’t want to send you out before you’ve properly healed enough to get hurt again. A man can only take so many sutures in a lifetime.”

 

[Light Ice]

For him it should not take long. He remained silent at that, unassuming. There had been some discussion about how fit he’d prove for duty. The injuries had been extensive. Talk of Medals. He had left England before they’d a chance to award them. Something in it, something in all of it, had filled his belly with lead and twisted it into knots. Now, he was here. Now, her little hands ran along his skin and his scars and he felt uncomfortable once again. It was different now. It was almost entirely different. But it was uncomfortable all the same and a part of him hoped she was right.

She spoke of Dover. It seemed impossible that she was there. Most of those nights early he’d been in and out of consciousness. The uncomfortable feeling swelled so sharp and so sudden that he felt an uncharacteristic desire to flee rip through him. She was beautiful, and strong, and she had seen him in a state where he had been anything but. There was something humbling about it, starkly so, in a way that he could not entirely comprehend.


So much of his body had seemed a ruin to him. When he’d really began to come around on that bed the state that he’d found himself in had seemed something of a disaster. But he’d never felt mournful about it all. He was alive. He had all his limbs. He could walk, eventually he would run and lift weights. He would fish if he survived the war. There were so many different measures of fortunate that he felt, and unworthy, that the weight of his injuries had been almost insignificant in comparison to the weight of his guilt. Try as he might, though, he did not remember the nurse with the red-hair. It seemed she had left before he had become his self again.

He looked at her long and hard to be sure.

And regretted it instantly.

Beauty was rare. True beauty was stunning, and stunningly so. He would have remembered the swell of her breasts, the shapely turn of her shoulder. He’d have remembered the sweetness of how she smelled. Was it lilac? He wasn’t sure. But she was near to him now and the warmth of that presence and his body’s awareness of her was potent and sure and it’d been so long since he’d had a woman that his body betrayed him.

His name was James – but nobody called him that. Everyone that had known him well had called him Mac. A play off his name – his irish heritage. Back at home he’d been known differently than he’d found here. But war turned men into gossips and in their boredom, and fear, they built legends for themselves. He felt little hands in his back, pressing at him. It was easy to feel his body refusing to yield to them. The strength there had come back quickly. His mother had often told him to be easy on the other boys when he’d been in school. But he remembered the glint of pride in her eye when she’d say it. The slur of her accent thick in that english.

“No.” He didn’t like the taste of the lie so he kept it simple. The reality of it was that he hurt so badly, so often, that he was certain that the two additional months they had anticipated him to take for healing would have been necessary.

He rounded, and sat. And she leaned close between the spread of his corded eyes and blinded him with the light that she’d produced. Still, it was too late. The grim realization of it didn’t require him to feel. He could hear his pulse in his ears. Knew what it meant. Kate had left him shortly after the war had began. The letter she’d sent had been passed around the boys and eventually posted on a board back in England. It was a common tale passed along by so many of lonely ladies back home making use of their free time. A few men, not serving, taking their pick of the proverbial litter without a care for those that had left them behind. A part of him was thankful it’d happened early. The hell of 41 had helped him forget the wound she’d left. And in the two years since he’d never found a stomach for whores like most the boys had.

“No, Captain.” He answered steadily. Lying, once again, with as few a words as possible.

Her fingers abruptly lifted and spread across his chest. The warmth of her touch quickened it. How long had it been since he’d felt his nerves wake? She seemed to have felt it. The way it leapt at her proximity. At he touch. Because she pulled her hand back and smoothed it down the apron. Her eyes dropped. And he knew she saw it then. The length of his prick had hardened earlier when he’d attempted to remember her. Beauty. Girlish, unfoolish, beauty. The ache had sharpened itself in his belly and he didn’t need to look down to know that inch after inch of him had thickened prominently until it lewdly strained his shorts. They were not meant to conceal a man on his endowment. The fabric was drawn painfully taut. The size hinted there, but not entirely revealed, was of ominous proportions. If he’d had a small cock it’d have been humiliating. But even with one he knew to be large it was embarassing and shameful to have lost his control over it in this moment.

“Missed anything important.” He answered quietly. James felt his skin crawl. Eager to escape the tent and get his uniform on. Beside him, finally noticing, the younger nurse gave an audible gasp and lfted her hand to cover her mouth. She was ten shades of red in an instant. He didn’t feel flattered. The silent plea for the Captain to release him filled the quiet that settled in the partition.

 

[MadMissJ]

He was lying. And her green eyes flared to life, and her lamentable Irish temper was sparked. But she said nothing, she gritted her teeth, twitching a muscle in her jaw as the words were pushed aside. Ailis wanted to dare him to lie to her again, it hardened the line of her full lips, and they turned into themselves spreading the pale pink lipstick she’d put on that morning. If he would have looked into her eyes for anything more than a second she would have perhaps let loose. But no matter how famous James MacCleary was, his injuries would be on her if she cleared him. In her mind there was a debate now, she could tell by the twitches in his back that it pained him. And now Ailis felt that she was going to be made into an accessory to whatever Captain MacCleary was up to. She was not in the habit of putting sutures in a man to have him run back out into the field eager to gather more.

But there was a bit more to it, if she admitted it. She was nervous, for him and about him. Whatever his reasons, he was back at the front. It seemed that the more lead that was thrown at him, the less he seemed to care. Ailis was reminding herself that she would look up his medical profile for confirmation of her suspicions. But in the here and now, though she was no Florence Nightingale, there was something clearly wrong. Not just physical. And the nurse in her wanted to ease it, and the woman in her…well…she did notice the reaction to him. Though she was covered, from neck to knee, the anger she’d experienced thanks to him seemed to shake itself loose with the chill of awareness that traveled up her spine, only to encourage a warmth that she’d forgotten in the blood and gore of the war.

“Missed anything important.”

That drew her eyes back up to his, and she was acutely horrified by the way that her hand had settled over her breasts, just in the position that it had touched his injuries. The child behind her gasped, and to cover her own momentary slip into idiocy she barked at her, backing away from her patient.

“Peache. Bandage duty.” It was angry sounding as she ordered the volunteer out, picking up her paper and turning away from the Captain to start to fill it out, willing her hand to not quiver. “Please get dressed Captain. I’m sorry for my nurse.” And for herself. “They are civilian aid workers. England is drumming them up, young girls from good families. Sheltered.” She too had been a young girl from a good family. But time had carried on without her permission, had forced her to skip innocent gasps of surprise, and suppress any feeling she’d had for any of the men that had come through her stations.

She tried to keep her back turned until he was finished dressing. Swallowing dryly at the sounds from behind her, looking at the curtain she was facing with singular interest. Turning once more, Ailis faced him, his medical clearance was still clutched in her hand, unsigned.

“Captain…” She began, taking a few steps closer so she could whisper, this time in Gaelic since he wouldn’t want the men outside to hear.

“If I sign this, with knowledge that you may be unfit for duty, anything that happens to you will be on my conscience.” Even the explanation of the problem sounded familiar and lovely to her ears. She missed her mother, her father, her sisters just then. She’d lost her brother several years before. “So I am going to ask you again, and please be honest. Are you fit to fly?” Her eyes were searching his face, curiosity blended with caution.

“I feel you should have taken a few more months in England, James.” She told him plainly. “Which means that you shouldn’t be here, but you are. And I am equally afraid of what it would do to those boys out there to have you grounded. We have to come to a consensus, you and I, an honest one.”

This was where she laid the paper down once more, scrawling her signature across the bottom of the form that he would be taking out to give to another officer. However, she didn’t give it to him.

“I will look after you. There are officers’ quarters and I will tend you there, away from the wards.” This was said near his ear, cloak and dagger. It was a stretch to reach him, and she was pressed against his arm, his fingers lingering at the front of her dress, if he turned his hand, he could have pressed his palm toward just where her nervous arousal was pooling, and while there the nurse tried to ignore the length of him pressed against her thigh. Her breath was hot and her head cloudy with worry, even talk of what she was proposing was against every regulation she’d come to hold dear. However, she breathed in the smell of his soap, and it seemed to confuse the matter more. “I am not sending you off to your death. And if I feel that you aren’t up for the task, you are going to be medically relieved.” This brought out a strong tone, though still just as quiet. “You will come to me when you are in discomfort. Do we have a deal, Captain MacClearly?”

 

[Light Ice]

It shouldn’t have happened. For the first time since the war started he found himself wishing he’d gone to one of the whores and had his needs finally met. There was something so clumsy about his erection in this moment. It seemed so foolish. A great hardness, a terrible desire, and he struggled to stuff it down the olive green of his trousers. He tried to will his cock from her spell but any progress he’d started to make as he dressed himself was ruined when she spoke.

The only woman he’d ever heard speak Gaelic had been his mother and a part of him hope that uncomfortable fact would help him tame the hardness of his prick. But it was comfort, and it was warmth, and more than anything it was a surprise to him that something that had always made him regard his mother as an immigrant could sound so beautifully exotic. His cock turned to steel in his trousers. It seemed harder than ever. Harder than he’d ever been.

“I won’t risk the lives of those boys.” He said quietly in answer. The Gaelic he spoke was a slower measure than her own. But it was accurate. And it was certain. “Look at them, Ailis. They’re kids.”

And then she was close and he hadn’t even seen the paper in her hand. His eyes had been held by the soft glint of light in her hair and the fine shade of red it shined. And then their eyes met and she was too close. The room smelled military issue but it couldn’t overcome her nearness. She’d put on perfume, he was certain now. If he had to guess it would have been lilac but he would never be certain. The great awareness of her grew sharper still and his cock was iron hard against the silk of her thigh. She was close. So close. And he opened his hand out of reflex.

Aware of their proximity, and her sex, he avoided it. Instead, his fingers brushed along the arch of her hip and then abandoned that as well. It was a faint touch. A brush in passing. Half mistake, half unwitting desire, and in him it ignited all manner of feelings that he had long forgotten.

This was a dangerous fire they were playing with. He felt her attraction. He wasn’t ignorant of it. But more importantly he knew what she was saying, and why, and wouldn’t pretend that it wasn’t anything but a gift given circumstance. The pale cut of his eyes sought her own even as she lingered. The tension between them so thick. She was beautiful. It was a shallow word to describe what she was. A vision of something that moved him. The power and pleasure of her nearness enough to drive his cold heart to distraction.

“I can fly.” He said quietly to her. There was no vanity in his words. Obligation, maybe. But not vanity. Not pride. “It hurts but I can manage it. I'll do what you ask.”

 

[MadMissJ]

The low timbre of his voice, in the sounds from the land she’d grown up in seemed to carry her off, no matter that they were in a crowd of people, and were just barely curtained off away from them. She allowed her eyelashes to flutter closed when he said her name. His tongue wrapped around it with such confidence, it wasn’t tripped over like the other Americans. Who insisted on ‘Alice’ or something that rhymed with “Delish’. It didn’t matter the somber words that came after it, sure, they registered, but didn’t land the way her name had. Her ears seemed to ring with it, and the blood in her veins thickened, immediately. Of course he would see her breathe out, with how silent the space was between them, he would notice her staggering breathes as she opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long, long time since anyone has said my name like that.” It was far too personal, she wanted to smile to reassure him, give him some friendly gesture in return, but she needed to know if, when she let him out of the room, he would hold up his end of the bargain. And unfortunately, any interest on her part was to be stamped out immediately. The nursing corps were there for one reason. To keep the war moving. She’d been told, by her commanding officer that she was to be the example for her girls. And here she was, whispering in his ear, so closely that her bottom lip could have caught his lobe if she’d only let herself fall into him. The way his fingers grazed her side, not unlike one would have held her for dancing, elicited a small catch in the armor of the otherwise reserved woman.

And he said he could fly.

“It hurts but I can manage it. I'll do what you ask.”

Ailis shuffled her feet backward, the look on her face was softer. He was in pain, he admitted it to her. It was her job to ease it. Not to wonder at the feeling that smelling his military issue soap caused, and let the feel of his cock and his fingers lure her into some imagined scenario, where he would say her name much softer than he had before. Out of habit, and an action completely unheeding the warnings in her head to stay professional, her pointer finger wrapped around her thumb and she crossed herself, looking away from James when she held out his paper, far away from her body.

“See that you do.” Was all she could manage, glancing only once over her shoulder, before she called for the next soldier to come in.

 

[Light Ice]

He slept uneasy. The tent he was given he only shared with three others. It was a luxury many were not provided but rank, as they said, held considerable privileges. Still, he’d used the rest of his day productively. He had a crew to read up on. Their flight records, their training records. None had seen combat. Not a single one. The youngest was listed as eighteen but it seemed likely he was younger. The oldest was twenty-two. It didn’t help him sleep to know it. Children, half the world away.

And she didn’t help him sleep, either.

His mother had been skeptical of Kate from the start. She called it intuition and he called it an Irish Catholic mother at her most typical. But in the end she’d said something he could not shake. Does she stay with you when she’s gone, my boy? She’d asked him. And then when he’d attempted to assure her that Kate did, she’d only shaken her head with the most endearing condescention.

“No, me boy-o” she’d laughed gently. “But I suppose beggars can’t go on and be choosers.”

She’d been right, of course. He hadn’t written her in two years. The realization of it was never one that failed to level him with anything but grief. But what would he say? Now, for the first time, he thought he had something. He’d write and tell her that she was right. That he met a nurse from Ireland whose red hair was the color of a Dakota sunrise and whose presence hung with him even now when the shadowed thoughts of this war seemed so near.

Their first run was a milk run. Still, he didn’t complain. It wasn’t worth the points to these boys but he got to put them through some things and find their worth. He felt fairly good about it all. It wasn’t in his nature to spend time with them after. Instead, he lingered by <i>The Grey Lady</i> and looked over her battered, patched, and painted body. The B-17 looked fairly new compared to the state she’d been left in. His hands ran over the body where fresh fuselage had been patched in with the old to repair the tears that had once been there.

Gone, of course, were the countless gallons of blood that had swashed her decks a few months before. It’d been something to find that she’d been cleared for service. In a way, he supposed, she and him weren’t so different in that regard. Miracles, old birds, on their last legs doing their best to keep a few dumb kids from getting chopped to pieces before they could get home.

In the tent, later, he was early. It was empty. And he stood amidst it in the dark wondering if she’d meant to show up at all. The boys were off together playing cards. He’d seen them on his way as he passed the mess and procured two bottles of coke in a trade for some cigarettes. He hadn’t ever smoked and didn’t feel like taking it up now. The bottles, the bucket of ice, had cost him half a pack but that wasn’t much. His arms folded, he waited, pale eyes tracking the tent’s flap as he considered what his mother had said.

And how dangerous it felt now that he knew what she meant.

 

[MadMissJ]

She’d been answering to the Matron in the tents for several days. The problem with gearing up for casualties and injuries was in fact, the wait. They were no more than fifty miles away from the front, backed up against the sea, the aircraft carriers, and so close to England that she felt she could toss a message in a bottle and it would hit dry land. Ostend was a stepping stone, that’s what she’d been told. They were alone on this strip of land, whilst the boys that had moved with the carrier were now here, inspected and taking flight. But it did step on her toes to have her staff waiting around for action. They were told to disperse, see to setting up tents, making beds in new wards, preparing floors for when the wet season would come and carry the mud with it. Physically demanding work, that would tire the girls out. It was the lucky few who had been released at the end of the day. All except the Sisters. She wasn’t so unlike them she supposed. But she lacked the religious euphoria that came with abstaining from physical contact. Maybe that was why it was difficult to focus, when the flights were announced and she saw that Captain MacCleary was on a run.

While the boys in red, white and blue were doing their duty, a regiment from Belgian Congo had been transported to their base. A Punjabi unit that was wholly loyal to the Belgium government in London. She’d been asked by the commanding officer, who had a terrible case of wound rot but was amongst the better kept soldiers, if she was a Matron herself, seeing as the nurses with her were wondering about and speaking with the exotic men. But Ailis had, had other things on her mind, then to discover how they were different than the boys there already. When she’d said no, well, the knowing look from the officer had made her face an impassive mask. But the term ‘War Virgin’ no matter what accent it was said in still sounded like an insult.

She was making her way to the officer’s tent, where she was carrying a back for ice and one for heat, a few rolls of bandages to keep them where they would be needed, and several clinking glass and metal vials. The words: “Unwanted, Untouched, Unloved.” Were still spinning around in her head. She pushed through the opening of the tent and saw him with his arms folded and his eyes aimed at her as though she were in his sights. Wordlessly, she walked to a table to put the load in her arms down, she was stiff with hurt feelings. But tried to be as professional as possible, finally once everything was laid out, she turned to him, unbuttoning her short cloak and setting it down.

“I’m sorry, I’m late.” She murmured, looking at the bandages more than into his grey eyes. She’d gotten a little lost in them before, in the tone of his voice and the Gaelic that he spoke. She’d focused on his bare chest with the crisscrossing scars. This time, she was going to stick to English, and nurse him with respect, like he deserved. “We’ve had an influx of a few Punjabi units, they’re in bad shape.” She bit her tongue when she felt she was going to add to the story. “You were flying today?” Of course she knew that, but had to ask it like she didn’t. Green eyes sliding sideways, for confirmation. “Where does it hurt, James?”

 

[Light Ice]

She wasn’t there, not really. The focus was gone. He’d seen it as she entered the tent, stiff, lacking the hints of grace she had tried to mask earlier. In a strange way the wooden parade of movements made her all the more feminine to him. Vulnerable. It reminded him vaguely of the look wounded men had when they moved through pain. And he said nothing as she came in on him, speaking, her voice a clipped silk brogue as they stood amidst the olive drab canvas of the tent and her eyes raked the broad stretch of his chest and the fading scars that had brought them here. Still, he wasn’t quick to answer her. The bottles in his hand seemed a little heavier as his eyes raked the length of her elegant features and the slender, girlish column of her throat. The tension in it was evident.

“You know.” He said matter-of-factly. Still, her eyes didn’t find his own. He looked away then, past her slender shoulder, down the length of the empty tent as though it wasn’t there. In his mind he could see the shadowed shapes of the B-17’s as they sat lined along the airfield. “I remember you now.”

When he had her attention he popped the top off one of the glass bottles of coke and pressed it into her slender hands, not waiting for her to object before he continued. His memory of those days remained a shattered and ruinous thing. Morphine, medications, and Gerry had seen to it that his mind hadn’t held anything for long or well. But when she’d spoken of Dover he had spent time thinking of it. The beauty that stood near him now wasn’t the kind a man was quick to forget. And so, he’d set about remembering, and eventually pieces of it had slipped into place.

Not enough, really, for it to be of mind. He’d hardly have thought to brought it up if he hadn’t seen the state she was in when she walked up. Bare-chested still, he was quick to lift his bottle towards her, his smile ghost-thin as he offered her an almost sardonic toast. The coke was still cold and he hadn’t had one in a long time. The little luxury of it somehow made the words easier to say.

“To old friends.” And the bottles clinked quietly amidst the rustling of the tent’s heavy canvas folds.

“Isn’t it dangerous for you ladies to be here?” He heard himself ask.

But it seemed a prudent question given the state of things. Belgium, while a foothold provided, was not secure. The Germany Army’s retreat had pulled them north and east but they’d become stubborn in Belgium. The ports, alone, had a strategic value that the Nazis were keen to not ignore. Flak had been hellacious for any bombing squadron attempting to make a combat run and the fighters had not been pushed to the front but left to fly from England. It was a grim choice to afford the bombers to dominate the Belgian airfields. In the end it meant the Mustangs couldn’t stay with the bombers for the entirety of the trip as they had before. And so, once over target, the B-17’s would be alone. It reminded him of the war’s beginning when fighters couldn’t make the long runs to Germany and they’d been virtually picked apart.

Still, he watched her now with his glacial stare, curious as to how a woman so stunning could find herself on the front surrounded by cretinous Americans. And more, as he watched, he found himself wanting to hear her talk. Hoping for her to slip in some Gaelic or stumble on the lilting brogue of her home. And for a moment, even with his shirt abandoned and his old wounds bare, he didn’t think of the war in any tangible mean.

 

[MadMissJ]

“Oh, do you now?” Her voice was softer, watching as the glass bottle filled with syrupy liquid was handed over to her from the pilot. “I’m surprised, Captain. You were very touch and go for a while. But you had a good team, one of the more advanced medical units. Your surgeons were very talented men.” She smiled a little toward the bottles, watching what light was in the tent reflecting off the curves of the bottle. Looking up with some surprise when the bottom of his drink, sounded sharply against hers.

“To old friends.”

Ailis hesitated to drink the thing, her green eyes studying the man as he brought the glass thing to his lips. It was the way he said it, ironic that they would be meeting in this place. Ironic that it was only after they met again that he even remembered they were acquainted. She’d seen many, many men in her several years as an army nurse. Sometimes more than once. However, the redhead wasn’t the sort to drink cold soda alone with them. They were supposed to be infallible. The embodiment of the ideal of the ‘Girl back home.’ And though she was lost in thought, her eyes following the former wounds that she herself has assisted with in Dover in the surgical theater. Still Ailis gave a half smile and took a drink, her tongue was shocked with the effervescent bubbles and the shock of sugar to her system. A coke was almost better than fine wine. The last she hadn’t had much of over the last few years either.

“Slainte” The redhead said, shifting on her two feet, before taking a seat on the cot nearest her. So much for her English plan. It had worked for all of the time it took him to put a soda in her hands.

“Isn’t it dangerous for you ladies to be here?”

“As opposed to England?” She asked, shrugging her shoulders. “Nurses nurse where they are needed. Regardless of dangers. I have a distinguished service order for my work in France, medical on the run, I could have stayed I suppose. So like you, I am a volunteer. We were told if worse became worst, you men would save the planes, we would save the men. And if we are pushed to the coast, pray to God that The Channel is warm that day.” Yes, she was aware of his eyes on her. With a look up the almond shape of her green orbs crinkled a little at the sides, her red lashes that had lost the mascara she’d used earlier in the day, just flitted upward to look at the ceiling of the tent. “The nurses are volunteers, some not even of age when the war started. Frightening thought that when I left home, some of them may well have been in primary school. Like some of your pilots, expect.”

This common ground eased the tension out of her shoulders, it made her smile and drink the soda with a small laugh, twirling the bottle between her fingers.

“Is your shirt off because you need to have something seen to, Captain?” The Irish lass asked him, the annoyance from her entrance forgotten for the moment.

“You were flying today, I half thought you’d be the one in the cot.” She looked to her side, taking her free hand to run it over the pillow, straightening the corners of it.

 

[Light Ice]

She walked the line and revealed nothing. James felt the strain of desire tug at his heart, coaxing him along, and fought it down. There was something in her smile, in her laugh, that pushed the shadowed thoughts of the war aside. Something in how she looked at him, how sparse her make-up was, and how gentile her look in the soft light of the tent. They’d called it courage before but he’d only known as duty. It spoke to him now. Guided him as he closed the distance between them with the coke bottle hanging loosely in the fingers of his hand as it fell to his side.

It was hot. The summer was settling on them and the breeze was a welcomed break from the sweltering heat settling over the camp. You could smell the high-test from the airfield, and the canvas canopy that covered the row of bombers that waited. He reached out, imagined his mother’s encouragement even though it’d been years since he’d seen her, and let the large stretch of his hand close on the delicate fingers of her own.

“Yeah, I do. Something to show you first, Ailis.” He said.

Captain. He was certain she’d correct him but he paid it no mind. The sound of her name on his lips was a good one and he liked the way the rumble of his words held it close to him, low. She’d correct him but he paid it no mind, didn’t affordher the chance to turn back. Instead, with her fingers clasped in his own, he lead her from the tent and into the dark of the air field. In the distance a few men moved, leaving the Officer’s club and stumbling a bit towards the tents. There were the sounds of voices coming from within, ripples of energy and currents of feeling.

But he felt her presence most potently and didn’t trouble himself interpreting the meaning of it all. There was no time or thought paid to the significance of her little hand in his, or that she moved with him, or that when he looked back at her with his pale eyes glinting he caught a hint of a smile from her and met it with his own. Ailis, Ailis, Ailis was her name and it was the clarion call of relief to which he’d been searching. For a brief moment he wasn’t a pilot, or a veteran, he was simply James. And that slice of identity was a precious thing.

The rows of planes stood dark sentinals as they neared. Wingtip to wingtip, maybe ten feet between. Lined up so that they could make the run-way quick and try and take-off should the worst news come. They passed beneath the broad wings and beyond the large, still props until they came to The Gray Lady herself. Her patchwork repairs and battered paint, her nose marked with splashes of Gerry fighters that the gunners had gotten down and the long grim row of marks that represented successful bombing runs. The belly door was open and he lifted himself inside, abandoning her hand as he hoisted himself into place before he looked down to her and stretched his palm for her to take.

“Come on.” He said quietly. The plane smelled heavily of grease and fuel and the stale smell of cordite from the guns. “Can’t have you poking and prodding me without meeting the missus.”

A thin joke as his lips quirked a faint smile. There was no girl back home. No girl in England. No girl in Belgium. There was only the boys and the Lady and she. And when she took his hand, and somehow he knew she’d take his hand, he would hoist her in like the lissome little thing she was. Without a problem. A smooth, steady pull of strength that he misjudged (she was so light!) and ended with them chest to chest amidst the plane’s stooped fuselage.

 

[MadMissJ]

He had something to show her? The way he said it made it sound anything except a new bullet hole or some shrapnel that needed to be dug out of his side. So it made her wary, her eyes widening as he took her hand. In response, she only said ‘Captain.’ As a reminder to him, or maybe to herself, but the word alone didn’t stop her fingers from curling into the furrows between his knuckles. Her feet were slower than his, James was leading but Ailis was watching him. She was still in uniform, though she’d shed her outer layer once she’d reached the inside of the officer’s tent.

However, as they walked out further. She jumped with surprise when she heard the familiar voices sounding off, once the door to the Officer’s Club slammed shut and that put wings on her shoes, she tripped forward to follow more closely. She was smiling though, inside her head was whirling with ‘What If’s’, mostly pertaining to the rumors that would make their way around the camp if anyone saw them as they were. But they started to venture to the warmth of his skin, his strong hand clutching hers. And the butterflies that were immediately recognizable when he did. Her free arm wrapped around his arm, ducking beside him, as if he alone could hide her. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” Her protests weren’t even half-hearted, once they were among the wide wings of the airplanes. For as much time as she spent with pilots, she’d not spent much time with their machines. Mostly repairing mechanic’s knuckles, burns and those sorts of everyday things. Ailis wasn’t hugging his bare arm now. Those serious green eyes were examining; she was a naturally curious woman. Seeing the sheets of metal, notched into place with heavy welds and metal pieces. As they neared the nose of the plane, her finger followed the huge turn of the propeller, scooping down only to come back up as James pulled her further under the depths of the plane. The air was heavier there, laden with all the mechanical fuels and greases that she didn’t encounter in surgery.

“Come on. Can’t have you poking and prodding me without meeting the missus.”

He let go of her hand, and Ailis could have sworn that an electrical current that had been circling between their fingers, now sizzled up her arm and struck her in the chest, making it hard to breathe through the excitement. Still, she looked around and behind her before talking up to him.

“A girl just can’t compete with a Flying Fortress.” She finally let loose a grin, something that was wild and honest, not the strained and put on one she’d greeting him with initially. He looked strangely comfortable while holding out his hand for her to take, to drag her into his world. Ailis was much more comfortable in hers. She hesitated, in the end she let him but knew the minute she was being pulled into the plane, that they were going to topple. Ailis just didn’t know what she was going to hit on the way down. When they were laying, her on top of the Captain, she paused. Eyes rounded and looking down at him, before glancing up and craning her neck to see. The place was absolutely packed, every inch in her view had something she was afraid to touch.

Including the Captain.

“I’m afraid I’m going to break something if I get up.” She laughed, pushing herself upward slightly with her elbow on the side of her partner’s head, her chin braced on her palm. “How do you do it?” The pinned curls were doing their best now to come unknotted, scattering as wild hair was want to do. A sign that she had left Captain Macaire on the ground outside. “It all looks very delicate. Doesn't it? Like the slightest breeze would upset the inner workings.” Ailis decided, her breathing caught ever so slightly, when she looked into his eyes again. "It won't, but she looks it from this view, doesn't she?" Ailis removed her hand from his, putting her palm to the ground to roll to her side.

“Tá sé in am éirí” She confessed that it was time to get up, in her musical native tongue. But it was tinged with more than a little regret. However she didn’t move completely off him, just…to the side. Ailis was waiting for him to confirm as she shifted.

“Are you going to show me the rest of your missus?” Ailis tried her best imitation of an American accent, for the last word. Dropping off the lilt for a taste of twang.

 

[Light Ice]

She looked up, strained some, and all he knew was the way the red curls fought free and the column of her throat was a slender, elegant line just above him. Primal things took root now, coming from places he hardly knew. A warmth ripped through his body, spreading outward, radiating heat as his awareness of her provoked a carnal intent that seemed to drip from every cell of his body. Bare-chested beneath her was a small heaven as he felt the shape of her relax against him. Unafraid now. Ailis was a lissome thing with a full softness of the hips and a girlish swell that crushed eagerly to the broad stretch of his chest.

Then she posed above him, slipping just to the side. They lay amidst the aluminum and steel that formed the Lady’s skin. It was pitifully thin and little more than a paper-thin barrier against the dangers that surrounded them when they flew. Still, he trusted her, and seemed comfortable laying amongst all the components that stole her eyes. Those beautiful eyes.

“I thought she should have been knocked out of the sky a few times but she’s a tough ol’ girl.” He said quietly. It seemed so intensely intimate in this closed space.

There was a bond he had with the plane. The Lady wasn’t just a bomber, she was salvation, and he knew every bolt and every rivet that held her together. The mechanics acted as though the bird was theirs but he knew better, knew it by the way she felt under his hands. It was nice to share it with the red-haired nurse who’d stolen his attention. There was something in the way they spoke now, in her eyes, that helped assure him that the barrier between them had slipped some now.


Her lips formed Gaelic words, taking him further away. The soft lilt of her voice, the gentle twang, drew him in. It wasn’t just that she was from Ireland, though it’d certainly a charm to it. It was that she was dutiful. And he felt she was honest. And more than it all there was a Captain’s spirit in her as she laid beside him in the plane that had saved his life, and other lives, more than a few times over. She was an adventurer. And recognizing it now, seeing it in her face, was enough to shatter whatever restraint had kept him from making his affection clear.

Fortune favored the bold but he’d never given it the time to consider. Instead, as their eyes met in that dark space, he reached and gathered her jawline in the warmth of his palm until the delicate elegance of her face was framed by his touch. The desire to kiss her was sharp but he fought it down, embraced only the certainty of what he wanted and not the confusion of what he desired. For a long moment he just held her there, feeling her nearness, his thumb adding a daring stroke that tracked the silk of her cheek before he spoke.

“Tá tú an cailín is mó álainn, Ailis.”

And then he managed the faintest of smiles, one that touched his eyes and lived in the glacial blue-gray of them, before his hand released her and the fires lit between them smoldered warmly and happily in every movement. Inside the plane he rose until he was stooped over some, his hands reclaiming her own to help her rise so she could follow. Cramped, yes, but room enough for them to move. They passed fixed machine guns, dark barrels bristling from the fuselage. The bomb doors and bomb bay. Scooting to the side of it. Heading towards the cockpit, past the small ladders leading to the top and belly gunners.

“One flight, hydraulics failed. Turrets all got locked up and wouldn’t rotate. Gary, one of the boys, took a wrench to the console and just started beating on it. I mean, he’s a strong fella, he was really laying into it. Then, he shouts out, “For pete’s sake, you stubborn bitch, I’m beggin’ you. Please!” and just like that the hydraulics came back. All of them. He stood there with the wrench in the hand looking like he’d been touched by God himself.”

 

[MadMissJ]

“I thought she should have been knocked out of the sky a few times but she’s a tough ol’ girl.”

She was lost, more than a little. Felt that any movement on her part would be wooden, awkward or wrong. So she swallowed at the words that gathered on her tongue, they were words of apology, or expressing an acknowledgement of loss. But she was here, practically forehead to forehead, wedged on the floor of the aircraft with him, it didn’t seem like a moment for that. They had lists outside that held enough names and any regret seemed like too little.

“I’m glad she is.” Ailis decided on those words, as soft as the hand that reached for her, trailed its way along her jaw. She reached up to rest her own fingers along his wrist, seemingly inescapably drawn to the man who was smiling at her. Instead of setting herself back and away, observing only, Ailis had an urge to lean into the man, nestling her chin further into his palm. Hoping the darkness would hide her uncertainly, and give her a worldlier sheen.

She was holding any response in the anticipation that he was going to kiss her. Did she want him to? Oh yes. There was no denying it, everything around them seemed so far away, and their movements, fluid. Ripples of pleasure radiated from her warm cheeks as his thumb traced its way across the freckled plains. Her free fingers had tightened on his wrist with expectation when he spoke to her. She wanted to deny it, for modesty’s sake. But he was smiling, her green clover irises lighting a fire that seemed to melt the steel and ice of his grey-blue. Her lips turned upward, and the moment she through to take an action herself, he was standing. Leaving her slightly worried for any attempt to get to her feet, as he seemed to have swept her off them for a moment. Ailis beginning to question why his small touches and Gaelic, was wreaking havoc on her resolve to stay far, far away from service men.

Ailis followed him as he walked. Whisking her eyes to and fro, she knew the smell of gun powder and residue, when men like James were laid out on her stretchers, they smelled like the inside of his plane. It made her hold her fingers together tightly in front of her, not wanting to touch anything now. The outside propellers were one thing, this was an entirely new, uncharted world to her. Frightening in the scope of things. Maybe the next time James went up she would think about how terribly feeble everything seemed on this side. As she thought, he spoke, commanding her attention, refusing to let her drift into worry. Out of habit she crossed herself, not that she wasn’t used to the rough language and talking about The Lord in such a way. But she laughed, and that was strictly not allowed. She hid the noise behind her hand, the one that had just finished its movements.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Ailis added, once she felt she could do so without snorting a bit at the man’s desperation and the end result, leaving off watching James for looking around the cockpit, where she knew that he would be sitting. “So, how long did it take you to learn to fly?” First one questing finger reached out for the ‘U’ of the steering column. Avoiding the buttons at the top and on the console. Inside there was room for two, so she inspected the mechanisms on her side.

“Can I?” Ailis questioned, motioning to the seat, waiting for the go ahead before she sat, both sets of fingers resting on the metal of the controls, trying her best to sit up straighter to see over the nose of the plane, but light was fading quickly, she wouldn’t be able to enjoy the view.

“I had a patient once that I reviewed his check list with him, before he could sleep.” Ailis was already pulling her foot up and under her, so it would give her a bit of a boost for looking around. “Controls and Seats? Check. Gear switch? Neural.” She sounded off pieces of what she remembered. “I had to fetch a copy of the list from a pilot. Because I didn’t know throttles had to be closed, and cabin heat had to be off, in order for him to get shut eye the first night.” She smiled again, gaining a small bit of courage and familiarity, enough that she didn’t feel like every movement would bring down the expensive piece of equipment that James cared for so much.

“This is nice.” She gave up on keeping her hair in line anymore, shaking it out. Sighing and looking down at her apron, pinned neatly to her uniform. “Quiet. You can’t find quiet like this anywhere out there.” Now that she could see outward, the vague orange that always seemed to plague battle fronts was alive on the horizon. Fire? What else was left to torch?

“You do what you love, don’t you?” Ailis gave the Captain a sidelong glance, the questions coming back into her intelligent eyes. “I was thinking you were in it for the danger, but maybe you just do what you love. The work is backbreaking…” She trailed off, because indeed, it had broken him. Her hand found the small wounds that gathered on his shoulder, reading his skin like braille, before her hand dipped down to run the length of the scar over his heart. “But it’s not so outlandish a thought to come home to her, if you love it.”

 

[Light Ice]

He’d always felt intense about his work when he entered the plane. It’d been a place of business. A means to an end. The affection he held for the Lady came second, to his service, to the men who worked to ensure the mission was done. All smiles tended to die when they first got on board. Nerves, anxiousness, and the heavy weight of what to expect. It was usually a grim thing to board and move onboard the airplane. But now, with her, it was as though the entirety of the world was kept at bay. There was only the beautiful curl of her lips against the backdrop of her fair-skinned, elegant features. A curtain of red hair in the dark as she shook it free.

And her fingers worked at his shoulder, not as a nurse, but as a woman. A girl, really, because she was young and in that moment any restraint he’d had before had faded. She’d asked for the seat, the copilot’s, and he’d have given it to her. As his thoughts pulled away, stripped by her presence, he had the good sense to realize he’d have given her anything if she’d asked it.

Watershed. Years of isolation, self-imposed, shattered by the red-haired captain of the Nurses. Her lilt, her smile, all working to make a quick end to the bleak means by which he saw the war. In a movement his strength was brought to bare and he’d taken hold of the gentle curve of her hips. They flared perfectly under his tough from a narrow waist as he pulled her down, dropping her into his lap, pinning her against his rugged and bare-chested torso and the steering column. She fit. Barely. And he felt the wolfish way his eyes sought her own as he surprised her.

Bold. Impetuous. Impolite.

And he kissed her. James kissed her well and proper and as though he’d never forgotten how. She inspired the knowledge. The soft curve of her mouth and the feeling of her cheek under his hand as it slid up again. Her hair brushed the back of his knuckles and the sweetness of how she smelled potent and inescapable. His body came alive under her slight weight. Desire detonated in his belly as his lips played lightly against her own, and then deeply, then lightly again as her spell took hold and everything stopped.

Was there any treatment for this affliction? Would he have cared? James kissed her. He kissed her and he kissed her and he kissed her. The small cockpit of the Lady was their bastion against the dark in the Belgian night as it darkened the sky further beyond and stars winked pale fire amidst a canopy of ebon and shifting clouds. And all that he knew was the young nurse on his lap who’d torn asunder his reserve and found hints of him beneath. He kissed her. And he came alive.

 

[MadMissJ]

When it happened she was unprepared. Surprised really, to find herself uprooted from where she’d been half sitting, looking at the oncoming night. All it had taken was a touch, something that wasn’t inspecting, questing for a reason for discomfort. It had been her own fingers, not Captain Macaire’s. She’d touched the spots she had done the first day, first his shoulder then his heart. Wanting to ask about the organ again. As it was reserved for his plane. But she had so many other things she wanted to ask him. Everything and nothing. She wanted to ask nonsense things, like what it felt like to be the lone controller of the beast they were in. But also, if the cockpit always seemed so small, like he was on top of her, or rather she on top of him.

Was it the two of them, their uneven breathing that seemed like it could light up the night by just acknowledging the electricity between them? Maybe her eyes were conveying the war that was quietly waging inside her breast. To enjoy this, the side of him he was offering, or asking for more.

James seemed to understand all the thoughts she was in possession of. He wasn’t uncertain, at least it didn’t seem like it. She was pulled from her half perch in the co-pilot’s spot, only having to take one step, before she was turned and pulled downward again, seated across his thighs, his hands traveling from where he’d gripped her hips up her sides and into her hair. She could feel the press of the steering column against her side, but that was alright, she was leaning toward the pilot anyway, the eagerness to feel his mouth on hers, pushed away her apprehension. With the slightest shake of nerves, fingertips as subtle as butterfly’s wings, started at his belly. Touching the toned muscles, the gashes and injuries, fluttering over as much skin as she was capable of reaching, until her hands rested on his shoulders, curling around his neck to link finger’s at the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.

Her lips parted, gasping a breath, waiting for the tangle of his tongue to spar with hers once more. In the silence of the cockpit, she made a soft mewling sound of pleasure. It echoed in her ears, sounded like a moan that was leading to somewhere far more intimate. She met each of his kisses with a willingness to learn just want he wanted from her. When Ailis hesitated, James instructed wordlessly, when Ailis tentatively demanded, taking his bottom lip between her teeth to test out just how she was to pull him toward her, with her, James seemed to give over control.

“If we steam up these windows, they are going to know someone is in here.” She whispered in Gaelic, wanting to press her lips against the lobe of his ear. Still unsure if she was brave enough to do so. Ailis smiled and pulled back slightly, her lips puffy and pink from his. “Does talking about your missus always make you want to kiss another girl?” The laugh was breathless, half embarrassment had her ducking her head, putting her forehead against his, diligent digits breaking their hold of his shoulders to glide over the sharp chiseled span of his jaw. A small kiss was delivered, then another. She’d been building up to ask him if necking in his plane was akin to parking back home. But she never got the chance. His lips were distracting, and Ailis turned, grateful when there was no arm rest on his side to hit her knee against, when she pressed herself closer astride him. Giving more room between herself and the wheel, and less between the pilot and the nurse.

“Is this alright?” She asked, searching his face for a change in demeanor, once she’d changed her position. “It feels right.”

 

[Light Ice]

Beyond the cockpit the base hummed on like a machine, well-oiled, forging together the basic elements of humanity and the grinding necessity of war. Hitler had shaken the world and tore them all from their homes. Beneath him, thousands of feet below, the death he rained shattered lives and dreams and hopes and hearts. If you allowed yourself to consider it all, to weigh the cost, you could feel your heart breaking. In the end it amounted to principle and instinct. In the end you chose to believe it meant something. Or so, he thought, that was the way of it.

But in an instant he found himself grateful for the war because it had brought him here. This girl, whom he hardly knew, was a lissome thing upon his lap and the heat of her soothed the ache from him. They touched, and kissed, and one of his strong hands braced the delicate arch of her hip under his strong fingers while the other ran up between the narrow blades of her shoulders and beneath the curtain of auburn she’d let loose until his fingers played where it met the back of her neck.

He’d never known such softness.

He never would have known such softness if it wasn’t for the war.

In the last years his faith in God had all but eroded away entirely. There was no malice in it, really, just the creeping acceptance that men did as men did without the guidance of some fatherly hand. In its absence he had felt only a responsibility to be better. To be stronger. The weight of it was crushing of its own, really, but seemed lighter now. With her it was easy. Easy to thread his fingers up into her silken mane and pull her down. Easy to brush his mouth against her own and let his lips glide along the full curve of hers. And then cheek to cheek as his kisses ran her elegant jawline, her little ear, as he shifted in his seat against the urgent discomfort of his desire and found his cock iron-hard beneath her, throbbing hotly, demanding attention in his slacks while her little body crushed to his own.

It took only an instant for it to shift so that the core of her pressed to the core of him. There was no denying the heat of their closeness. The way her soft little thighs seemed so perfectly spread to settle the clothed promise of her sex against the massive length of his covered cock. She felt damp through the fabric. A lewd thought. But one that had the hand on her hip begin to slip down over the covered swell of her shapely backside. It all felt right. Too right. So mind-numbingly right that reservations were slipping away from him as his head turned, his cheek abandoned her own, and his face pushed her own head aside so his lips could travel the delicate column of her neck.

In his ear she spoke Gaelic, pretty in that lilt, teasing and girlish and in an instant his heart rent asunder and he surged beneath her. The swell of her breasts crushed against his naked chest. The broad stretch of it a contrast to her shape. A reminder.

“Feels…” he didn’t recognize the growl of his words. The low, barely-restrained rumble of desire that darkened them. “It feels…”

What did it feel like? Words failed him as he shifted again, forcing her to move with him, his strong hand spreading across the cheek of her ass and pressing thick fingers into yielding flesh. Pulling her into him, forcing her hips to dip and roll and the heat of her sex to grind languidly across the broad underside of his impossibly hard length. The fabric that separated them was thin but maddening. And he fought against the primal need to reach between her thighs, tear the fabric aside, and free himself so she could ease up and sink down on him. He wanted it so. Wanted her.

What did it feel like? Still, no words. His lips busied themselves against the nape of her neck, and slipped down, parting fabric not meant to push away so easy until his breath and his kisses tracked the arch of her collarbone. She tasted sweet and soft. He panted against her skin, felt her little fingers explore the length of him, and found himself entirely content to be lost in the cockpit. What plane? What war? His fingers sank more firmly into her backside, aware that he was bold, aware that it was not a gentleman’s behavior. And when he looked up at her and saw her eyes, lit beneath heavy lashes, he thought he saw the spark of something familiar. Something he felt.

And so he kissed her again. And he kissed her. And he kissed her.

 

[MadMissJ]

There was something so erotic about the noises echoing around in the cockpit of the aircraft. The instruments couldn’t dull the sound of breaths being held and sighed, nor did it do much to hide the liquid pleasure of their lips parting and meeting again and again, sparring with their tongues. When she’d moved, it had been whilst holding his gaze, tentative and slow. But with splayed fingers in her hair, he’d tilted her chin up, cradling her against him as his lips and teeth trailed along her jaw, down over her neck.

She’d not forgotten anything about meeting him before, when she closed her eyes, at first all she saw was the way he’d stood in her cubicle several days ago. When she’d asked him questions and he’d lied to her. Her eyes had been drawn down to the front of his shorts, what he’d had hidden there had made her blush, maybe she blushed still, but as James’ hand traveled around her, pulling her tightly against him, her long lashes shot open with surprise, the shift, the movement bowing her lips into a perfect ‘O’ of surprised as she inhaled a small cry of satisfaction. But his hand continued upward, under her skirt, finding what little else was under it. The belt that held up her garters, the soft fabric it clung to, that he widened his palms, pressing her hips forward from behind, sliding her along his thigh, and more. She shook, registering what exactly she was letting him do. Green eyes, falling from where they’d been focused, to look at him, fingers tugging against his bare flesh.

“It feels…”

“Yes, it does.” She assured him breathlessly, wanting to release the coil of anxiety over the way she responded to him. With a shutter her own fingers were under her skirt, fluttering between them, her palm first finding him through his trousers, she inched back on his leg to journey to the tip of him, fingers caressing the sheathed cock. With it hidden she couldn’t wrap her hand around him, she settled for exploration, her thumb easing along one side and her fingers on the other. She knew too much about men’s pain, and close to nothing about their pleasure. She’d been a young nurse, was a young nurse still. She’d seen men’s forms, bathed them, but her attentions always were of the utmost respect. His however? Ailis smiled softly, she didn’t think that his attentions at this moment were the same. Her buttons had given way, the white of her apron hanging forlorn to her waist, the weight of her metal holding it down. Her nurses’ blouse open, the delicate pink fabric beneath not army regulation.

Her arm wrapped around the pilot’s shoulder, she inched upward, pinning her hand between them. The pressure of it, the pleasure of it, had her opening beneath his lips again. Burning for the attention. Ailis recognized what was happening, she’d kissed a few boys, had a few moments of fleetingly gratifying moments. But this was a man, lean hips rocking against hers, when her fingers wriggled free to clutch at his neck, urging him closer with each kiss. Ailis turned her movements into a swaying cadence, content to writhe against the head of him, butting her clit against him, rocking her backside into his hand.

But what were they thinking?

“James.” She felt hot, like one would in the jungle. A humid sort of heat, like that had been pressed into his trousers, the embarrassment of that alone could have stopped her. And though she tried to put her fingers over his lips to stop the kiss, she found him through open fingers and started it again.

“James?” Ailis exhaled, her intention to speak more than his name. But she repeated it on his lips, letting it die for a moment, when she shifted again in his lap. “James? We don’t…” A kiss. “Even know each other.” Was she telling him? Or wondering at the point? It was hard to say when her limb trailed down his back and her other hand that had been after stopping their actions rested just above his belt on his hip.

“Right?” They’d been her words, but she regretted them now. Regretted the pause. “You could get hurt.” The observance of the last seemed like a last ditch effort to remind her of what her place was in the camp. She was supposed to look after him, keep him safe, patch him up.