Fic: 16 Proofs of Love, #14 Biting one's lip: jealous
Title: America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All)
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: gen, a bit of het
Summary: It's Vietnam 1967 and Captain Matthew Kemp and Lieutenant Jenna Wells get to know Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman, their new COs.
A/N: Alright, this was supposed to come much later (there are a few more stories on the backburner taking place before this) but since I'll post another story with those two later, I thought it might be good to introduce them to you and only now realized that it might have been clever to do that on the actual December 7 but I hope it's okay like this.
Regular readers of Protect and Survive might know Matt Kemp and Jenna Wells as characters I sometimes borrow from ancient_leah and she gracefully let me use them for this 'verse as well. It takes place[spoilery]at the end of Laura's and Evan's first tour and the beginning of their second tourand yes, that's why it's kinda spoilery. I hope you like it, anyway :)
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
( Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More) )
( We'll Dance Until Morning ('Til There's Just You And Me) )
( With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown) )
( So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts) )
( No Reason To Get Excited (The Thief He Kindly Spoke) )
( Forget The Dead You’ve Left (They Will Not Follow You) )
( It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This) )
America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All)
“America has heard the bugle call
And you know it involves us, one and all
I don’t suppose that war will ever end
There’s fighting that will break us up again.”
Johnny Wright, “Hello Vietnam”
So this is the fabled ‘Nam, huh? Dirt and heat and kerosene fumes and did he mention the goddamn dirt yet. And Jesus fucking Christ, the fucking heat. He honestly thought that having been stationed in New Mexico ever since two years ago prepared him somewhat for serving in Vietnam but he should have believed all those guys who told him that nothing could adequately prepare you for arriving in SEA. Not even the older officers who’d had some experience in the Pacific in the Forties had managed to tell them how exactly it would be and now look at him, sweating like a pig in his service dress. Fucking hell.
He throws a look to his right, at Lieutenant Jenna Wells, general’s daughter, Air Force Times reporter and just this side of helicopter crazy. Okay, basically just any aircraft but she really developed a weird special fascination for choppers that nearly cost him his promotion a year ago. Or, well, his stupid decision to give in to her cajoling and begging to let her have “just one short flight, please, please, please” did. Either way, it makes him just a little bit smug to see that she doesn’t look any better than he currently feels.
But damn, he’s just a little bit jealous that she’s allowed to wear something as marginally more practicable in this climate as a skirt. What wouldn’t he give for some damn shorts right now.
At least she looks like she’s starting to regret her decision to snap at him when he’d offered to help her carry her luggage, going all Women’s Lib on him and telling him to stop treating her like a simpering female who couldn’t even lift her own purse. Well, there you go, Lieutenant “I can carry that on my own!” he thinks and can just barely resist to smirk. So, where the hell is their ride to Tan Son Nhut Air Base?
He looks at Wells again and she’s staring back defiantly, probably dying to spit something like “Great job at getting us lost already, Captain High and Mighty” at him. He just rolls his eyes and gets back to scanning their surroundings for anything or anyone that might indicate where they’re supposed to turn to next. He is senior rank around here, after all.
So… Marines, Marines, Marines, and, surprise, even more Marines and the next one that is stupid enough to try and hit on Wells will get their “some”, hopefully in the form of a hearty slap or getting their toes crushed by Wells. If there was ever a WAF not shy about physically impairing anyone dim-witted enough to even look at her the wrong way, it’s Lieutenant Jenna Wells. Sometimes, even he is scared of her.
Goddammit, why isn’t there… oh. Oh. Uh-oh. He clears his throat. “Lieutenant?”
“What?” Apparently, the heat and the dirt and the kerosene fuels and the many, many harrowing hours of flight sure didn’t have any mellowing effect on the grumpiness she’s been famous for at Cannon AFB ever since she arrived around the same time as he.
He tries not to sigh. “Didn’t you say your new CO is a WAC?”
She eyes him suspiciously. “Yes. Why?”
“Because I think I just found our ride,” he says, jerking his head towards a fairly odd looking couple leaning against a dusty jeep with their arms folded in front of their chests.
Did she just mumble “The fucking hell?” under her breath?
God, he hopes not because wherever she got that from, the General will make him responsible for it. Ever since he let himself be persuaded to take her for a little joyride in his Huey and her father got wind of it the General thinks that whatever inappropriate thing his daughter did now, it’s his fault.
Then again, that’s about the same thing he just thought when he spotted them. They’re a man and a woman, both wearing what they call jungle greens around here and big aviators’ sunglasses. The guy’s wearing an Air Force garrison cap with something looking suspiciously like oak leaves glittering in the sun while the female soldier is wearing the guys coming back from Vietnam call a boonie hat with the sides buttoned up and he thinks he just saw Captain’s bars on her lapels. And… good God, is that a cigarette hanging in a corner of the Major’s mouth?
Ah great, the pair just caught side of them and… both turn back to dig something out of the jeep in a perfectly synchronized movement… “Ah, shit.”
“Knowing you haven’t lost your ability to read greatly reassures me. Sir.” Haha, very funny, Wells, he thinks and just glares at her to get her moving towards the two officers holding up hand-painted signs with their respective names on them, the Captain snatching the cigarette out of the Major’s mouth. Rolling her eyes, Wells complies and they make their way over to the officers.
When they get there, he tries to feel not too embarrassed, seeing as those two look like they don’t even register the heat and the dirt in their rumpled jungle greens. He can very well see that there’s a grin tugging at both their mouths but he decides to not let him keep that from executing a textbook report, including a sharp salute - from the corner of his eyes he can see that Wells at least didn’t want to be outdone by him in that and follows suit - and saying, “Captain Matthew Kemp and Lieutenant Jenna Wells reporting for duty as ordered, sir.”
Damn, what is there to laugh about, he wants to snap at the Captain who can barely hide her amusement but the Major is faster. Instead of returning the salute, though, he just puts the sign away and sticks out his hand, saying, “Major Evan “Fortune Cookie” Lorne, your new CO. Pleased to meet you, Captain,” in a voice that very clearly states that he’s probably just as amused as the Captain.
Not quite sure how to react, he hesitates a moment before taking the Major’s hand and shaking it. “Pleased to meet you, too… sir.”
Lorne nods and then points towards the Captain next to him whose dead pan look even penetrates the shades she’s still wearing. He’s addressing Wells now. “Captain Laura “Crackers” Cadman, Women’s Army Corps. Your new boss, Lieutenant.”
He’s pretty sure that the Captain just rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses as she murmurs, “Seriously, Cookie?” while sticking out her hand towards Wells. “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”
Wells looks pretty much like she has no idea how to react to this and like she thinks their new COs must be either fucking with their minds or out of theirs. It’s amazing how much she looks like her father in moments like those. Amazing and downright scary.
In the end, Wells manages to cover up her bewilderment with taking Cadman’s hand and telling her that she’s pleased to meet her although he’s pretty sure he detected more than one sign in Wells’s body language that told him that she’s anything but pleased.
“Alright, enough with the introduction. Crew’s waiting on the tarmac, so throw in your baggage and hop in, Airmen,” Lorne tells them then, sounding a little less relaxed and a bit more business-like than just a moment before. But for some reason being included in the “Airmen” seems to have smoothed Wells’s feathers a bit and he’s kind of grateful for that. He doesn’t really mind Wells’s bluestocking moods but he’s not sure how well anyone else would be able to handle them.
Then again, Lorne doesn’t seem to mind that Cadman nearly succeeds in securing the driver’s seat and what is it that’s rubbing him wrong about those two, anyway?
At first he thought it was the casual attire but then again, they’re in a war zone and from the very few things the guys at Cannon who’ve been over here told them he could gauge that things are… different here so jungle greens and Ray Bans at every opportunity are probably just par for the course. Then, when they got in the car and Cadman kept smoking the cigarette she’d stolen from Lorne freely, he’d thought that he was maybe channeling his mother who thinks smoking is something ladies just don’t do but seriously, he’d never really believed in that, anyway.
He looks at Wells and she just rolls her eyes again. What? What in God’s name is she trying to… “Okay, kids, that’s our stop. Everyone get out and into the chopper.”
Chopper? He doesn’t… that’s not a Huey. That is very, very much not a fucking Huey. That’s… a monster. “Never seen a Jolly Green Giant before, Captain?”
That just can’t be right. “Well, yes, but I’m not exactly HH-3 qualified. There must have been a mistake somewhere…”
“Your file said you received training for three different helicopter types, the HH-3 among them. No mistake at all, Captain.” Well, yes, okay, he’d gotten an introduction and he has three or four flight hours on a Jolly Green Giant under his belt but… he’s a Huey pilot. A goddamn gunship pilot who can fly combat, dust-off, everything that involves fast reaction, steady nerves and bad ass superhuman reflexes. He loves being a Huey pilot. He never wanted to be anything but a Huey pilot.
He fumbles around for words, trying to ignore Wells’s annoyed stare and Cadman’s curious gaze. “Look, sir, there really must have been a mix-up here or something. I haven’t been flying HH-3s in ages and…”
“You’re a chopper pilot, right?” Oh. That look on Lorne’s face… doesn’t look good?
Sensing that he’s walking straight into a deadly trap, he swallows and tries to be brave nonetheless. “Yes, sir, but…”
“So let’s fly this chopper.” For someone looking so relaxed just ten minutes ago, Lorne sure isn’t good with taking no for an answer now.
Still, he’s not going to go down without a fight. “Sir, I’m really not…”
“Get in and put your damn ass in front of the damn stick, Captain. That’s an order.” Okay, maybe he is.
“Yes, sir.” Damn, that can’t be a good way to start off a tour.
And Wells isn’t helping much either, hissing, “Way to go, Captain Idiot,” at him when they unload their baggage to carry it over the tarmac towards the chopper and what does she care about how he ruins his work relationship with his boss, anyway?
The only reason he doesn’t snap at her and tell her to keep her nose out of his damn business is that they’ve reached the monster of a chopper and that after a loud whistle from Lorne two guys jump down from the roof, Sergeant’s stripes on their arms. They’re wearing shades as well, one of them white and maybe in his late thirties or early forties and the other black and possibly in his late twenties. Lorne speaks up again. “Captain Kemp, Lieutenant Wells, these are Senior Master Sergeant Robert McPherson, crew chief and door gunner and Master Sergeant Will Meyers, Pararescue jumper and medic. Mac, Meyers, those are Captain Matthew Kemp, our new co-pilot and Lieutenant Jenna Wells, Captain Cadman’s new reporter.”
The Sergeants both stick out their hands and he moves to shake them, not sure how this is going to go. From the look of it, they must have been as long in Vietnam as Lorne and it occurs to him just now that he’s barging in a team that’s probably been through hell in the last twelve months. Just fucking great.
Oh, and there goes Lieutenant Wells ogling the monster chopper with a glint in her eyes that you usually see in girls in adverts for diamond engagement rings. She’s gonna be so disappointed when she gets one of those instead of her very own chopper, if she ever gets married.
Cadman seems to have seen it, too and the fact that she doesn’t comment on it, just looks a little amused as she puts her pilot helmet on - wait, why does she even have that and why are there an Air Force crest and the words “Off with one helluva roar!” elaborately painted on the front? - counts immensely in her favor. He might think Wells to be a bit of a nerd but that doesn’t mean he’s going to accept anyone actually calling her that to her face.
Anyway… good God, why is there the crest of the Women’s Army Corps on one side and the words “Property of Women’s Army Corps” painted on Lorne’s helmet? What the fuck is going on here? “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen helmet graffiti before, Captain.”
Dammit, is that guy psychic? Also, there’s no reason to sputter like he’s doing, “No, not… up close, sir, but it’s… um…”
“You got a call sign, Kemp?” Huh, what?
“Yes he does and it’s Hermit.” Jesus fucking Christ, Wells. Who gave you a damn headset?
And no, sir, there’s no reason to sound so derisive when saying, “Hermit, Captain?” while switching on the rotors and easing the monster into the air with a grace he’d never have associated with an HH-3.
He clenches his jaw and tries to sound final instead of pleading. “Don’t ask, sir.” Which, obviously, didn’t work at all.
Thankfully, Wells is so in awe of the HH-3 that she doesn’t sit down like any normal passenger aboard a chopper would do but keeps staggering around, distracting everyone from his stupid call sign and pestering both McPherson and Meyers with all kinds of technical questions about the monster. What really astounds him, though, is how readily both answer her and as far as he can hear from the fragments drifting through the concentration of having to fly unfamiliar aircraft over unfamiliar territory, they don’t sound nearly as annoyed as the guys at Cannon AFB did whenever Wells went to pepper them with her questions and observations.
The strange warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing someone not treating her like a freak for being more interested in the aircraft than in the guys flying them is pretty much disruptive to his flying and he decides to ignore it.
It’s not helping that Lorne is used well enough to this bird to throw around questions like, “Is it normal for Air Force women to be so overly interested in the technical properties of helicopters?” though.
He looks ahead, cursing himself for forgetting to pack his goddamn shades and squints into the sun while he tries to sound not too miffed with what Lorne just insinuated. “It sure is normal for this Air Force woman.”
“Oh, you guys have a history.” More a statement than a question and he gives Lorne bonus points for keeping his tone neutral instead of lewd. He’s just so tired of everyone thinking he let Wells into his Huey so she would let him into her pants. He has no interest whatsoever in her pants.
But just for caution’s sake, he decides to be non-committal. “Kind of.”
He expects Lorne to try and find out more about this “kind of” kind of history but the Major surprises him again, saying, “Is there any way I can get her to stop looking so longingly?”
Not really sure what Lorne just meant, he turns around to throw a look over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of Wells sitting on one of the empty cots in the HH-3’s cargo room, looking like a little girl that just saw the pony of her dreams. He can just barely keep from sighing. “There might be one…”
“Ah, I think I got an idea.” He… does? “Hey, Lieutenant, you ever saw a Giant’s controls?” Ah, where the hell is that going now?
“No, sir.” It’s kind of cute how Wells just tried to sound very confident and disinterested when even people who don’t know her could have heard the yearning fromm one mile away.
“Come on up and have a look.” And in that moment he just knows that he’ll follow Lorne into hell and back when he has to. He’d been ready to hate the guy for the entire twelve months just for implying that Wells wasn’t “normal” and then he goes and calls her up to the cockpit as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, just to stop her looking so longingly at all the beautiful controls that must seem like candy to her. That guy’s a fucking hero.
And Wells being Wells… she doesn’t wait for another invitation and comes crawling towards them, squeezing herself between Lorne and him and he can’t help keeping to throw her looks as she listens intently to Lorne explaining the controls, unconsciously biting her lip in deep concentration, just like she had when he’d let her have the controls of the Huey he flew at Cannon for a few minutes. And here he’d thought he was the only one who could give her that sparkle of absolute concentration and pleasure in her eyes.
The stab of jealousy that just gave him is the most ridiculous thing he ever experienced which is why he will never think of it again and keep on flying this monster instead.
It’s not exactly easy with Wells so close in proximity, radiating delight strong enough to power a small city for almost the entire ride to Tan Son Nhut but somehow he manages it and when Lorne puts his pair of shades into his hands with the words, “I expect them back as soon as you got yourself decent ones at the PX,” after exiting the Giant, he can’t help hoping that he might not miss the Hueys as much as he feared he would when he laid his eyes on the monster for the first time, after all.
After that, it’s off to camp registration and then the male officers’ BOQ first and off to the WAFs second and he’s pretty sure that if it were just them, Wells wouldn’t stop gushing about the flight. She looks ready to burst and when Lorne and Cadman have dropped them off at the PX after Cadman “ordering” them to join the “rest of the gang” at the local Vietnamese Air Force’s officers club tonight, he can’t fight the urge to say, “So… what do you think?”
Of course she immediately starts flooding him with technical data she gathered from the Sergeants and the greatness that is being allowed, even required to be a passenger in a chopper and maybe it’s the jet lag or the exhaustion of his first day in this strange, hot country but somehow, all of a sudden, it doesn’t bother him so much anymore. Maybe, just maybe being stationed in Vietnam with Jenna Wells of all people isn’t going to be so bad, after all. A guy can hope, can’t he?
~*~
TBC in Military Madness (Is Killing Your Country).
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: gen, a bit of het
Summary: It's Vietnam 1967 and Captain Matthew Kemp and Lieutenant Jenna Wells get to know Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman, their new COs.
A/N: Alright, this was supposed to come much later (there are a few more stories on the backburner taking place before this) but since I'll post another story with those two later, I thought it might be good to introduce them to you and only now realized that it might have been clever to do that on the actual December 7 but I hope it's okay like this.
Regular readers of Protect and Survive might know Matt Kemp and Jenna Wells as characters I sometimes borrow from ancient_leah and she gracefully let me use them for this 'verse as well. It takes place[spoilery]at the end of Laura's and Evan's first tour and the beginning of their second tourand yes, that's why it's kinda spoilery. I hope you like it, anyway :)
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
( Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More) )
( We'll Dance Until Morning ('Til There's Just You And Me) )
( With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown) )
( So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts) )
( No Reason To Get Excited (The Thief He Kindly Spoke) )
( Forget The Dead You’ve Left (They Will Not Follow You) )
( It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This) )
America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All)
“America has heard the bugle call
And you know it involves us, one and all
I don’t suppose that war will ever end
There’s fighting that will break us up again.”
Johnny Wright, “Hello Vietnam”
So this is the fabled ‘Nam, huh? Dirt and heat and kerosene fumes and did he mention the goddamn dirt yet. And Jesus fucking Christ, the fucking heat. He honestly thought that having been stationed in New Mexico ever since two years ago prepared him somewhat for serving in Vietnam but he should have believed all those guys who told him that nothing could adequately prepare you for arriving in SEA. Not even the older officers who’d had some experience in the Pacific in the Forties had managed to tell them how exactly it would be and now look at him, sweating like a pig in his service dress. Fucking hell.
He throws a look to his right, at Lieutenant Jenna Wells, general’s daughter, Air Force Times reporter and just this side of helicopter crazy. Okay, basically just any aircraft but she really developed a weird special fascination for choppers that nearly cost him his promotion a year ago. Or, well, his stupid decision to give in to her cajoling and begging to let her have “just one short flight, please, please, please” did. Either way, it makes him just a little bit smug to see that she doesn’t look any better than he currently feels.
But damn, he’s just a little bit jealous that she’s allowed to wear something as marginally more practicable in this climate as a skirt. What wouldn’t he give for some damn shorts right now.
At least she looks like she’s starting to regret her decision to snap at him when he’d offered to help her carry her luggage, going all Women’s Lib on him and telling him to stop treating her like a simpering female who couldn’t even lift her own purse. Well, there you go, Lieutenant “I can carry that on my own!” he thinks and can just barely resist to smirk. So, where the hell is their ride to Tan Son Nhut Air Base?
He looks at Wells again and she’s staring back defiantly, probably dying to spit something like “Great job at getting us lost already, Captain High and Mighty” at him. He just rolls his eyes and gets back to scanning their surroundings for anything or anyone that might indicate where they’re supposed to turn to next. He is senior rank around here, after all.
So… Marines, Marines, Marines, and, surprise, even more Marines and the next one that is stupid enough to try and hit on Wells will get their “some”, hopefully in the form of a hearty slap or getting their toes crushed by Wells. If there was ever a WAF not shy about physically impairing anyone dim-witted enough to even look at her the wrong way, it’s Lieutenant Jenna Wells. Sometimes, even he is scared of her.
Goddammit, why isn’t there… oh. Oh. Uh-oh. He clears his throat. “Lieutenant?”
“What?” Apparently, the heat and the dirt and the kerosene fuels and the many, many harrowing hours of flight sure didn’t have any mellowing effect on the grumpiness she’s been famous for at Cannon AFB ever since she arrived around the same time as he.
He tries not to sigh. “Didn’t you say your new CO is a WAC?”
She eyes him suspiciously. “Yes. Why?”
“Because I think I just found our ride,” he says, jerking his head towards a fairly odd looking couple leaning against a dusty jeep with their arms folded in front of their chests.
Did she just mumble “The fucking hell?” under her breath?
God, he hopes not because wherever she got that from, the General will make him responsible for it. Ever since he let himself be persuaded to take her for a little joyride in his Huey and her father got wind of it the General thinks that whatever inappropriate thing his daughter did now, it’s his fault.
Then again, that’s about the same thing he just thought when he spotted them. They’re a man and a woman, both wearing what they call jungle greens around here and big aviators’ sunglasses. The guy’s wearing an Air Force garrison cap with something looking suspiciously like oak leaves glittering in the sun while the female soldier is wearing the guys coming back from Vietnam call a boonie hat with the sides buttoned up and he thinks he just saw Captain’s bars on her lapels. And… good God, is that a cigarette hanging in a corner of the Major’s mouth?
Ah great, the pair just caught side of them and… both turn back to dig something out of the jeep in a perfectly synchronized movement… “Ah, shit.”
“Knowing you haven’t lost your ability to read greatly reassures me. Sir.” Haha, very funny, Wells, he thinks and just glares at her to get her moving towards the two officers holding up hand-painted signs with their respective names on them, the Captain snatching the cigarette out of the Major’s mouth. Rolling her eyes, Wells complies and they make their way over to the officers.
When they get there, he tries to feel not too embarrassed, seeing as those two look like they don’t even register the heat and the dirt in their rumpled jungle greens. He can very well see that there’s a grin tugging at both their mouths but he decides to not let him keep that from executing a textbook report, including a sharp salute - from the corner of his eyes he can see that Wells at least didn’t want to be outdone by him in that and follows suit - and saying, “Captain Matthew Kemp and Lieutenant Jenna Wells reporting for duty as ordered, sir.”
Damn, what is there to laugh about, he wants to snap at the Captain who can barely hide her amusement but the Major is faster. Instead of returning the salute, though, he just puts the sign away and sticks out his hand, saying, “Major Evan “Fortune Cookie” Lorne, your new CO. Pleased to meet you, Captain,” in a voice that very clearly states that he’s probably just as amused as the Captain.
Not quite sure how to react, he hesitates a moment before taking the Major’s hand and shaking it. “Pleased to meet you, too… sir.”
Lorne nods and then points towards the Captain next to him whose dead pan look even penetrates the shades she’s still wearing. He’s addressing Wells now. “Captain Laura “Crackers” Cadman, Women’s Army Corps. Your new boss, Lieutenant.”
He’s pretty sure that the Captain just rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses as she murmurs, “Seriously, Cookie?” while sticking out her hand towards Wells. “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”
Wells looks pretty much like she has no idea how to react to this and like she thinks their new COs must be either fucking with their minds or out of theirs. It’s amazing how much she looks like her father in moments like those. Amazing and downright scary.
In the end, Wells manages to cover up her bewilderment with taking Cadman’s hand and telling her that she’s pleased to meet her although he’s pretty sure he detected more than one sign in Wells’s body language that told him that she’s anything but pleased.
“Alright, enough with the introduction. Crew’s waiting on the tarmac, so throw in your baggage and hop in, Airmen,” Lorne tells them then, sounding a little less relaxed and a bit more business-like than just a moment before. But for some reason being included in the “Airmen” seems to have smoothed Wells’s feathers a bit and he’s kind of grateful for that. He doesn’t really mind Wells’s bluestocking moods but he’s not sure how well anyone else would be able to handle them.
Then again, Lorne doesn’t seem to mind that Cadman nearly succeeds in securing the driver’s seat and what is it that’s rubbing him wrong about those two, anyway?
At first he thought it was the casual attire but then again, they’re in a war zone and from the very few things the guys at Cannon who’ve been over here told them he could gauge that things are… different here so jungle greens and Ray Bans at every opportunity are probably just par for the course. Then, when they got in the car and Cadman kept smoking the cigarette she’d stolen from Lorne freely, he’d thought that he was maybe channeling his mother who thinks smoking is something ladies just don’t do but seriously, he’d never really believed in that, anyway.
He looks at Wells and she just rolls her eyes again. What? What in God’s name is she trying to… “Okay, kids, that’s our stop. Everyone get out and into the chopper.”
Chopper? He doesn’t… that’s not a Huey. That is very, very much not a fucking Huey. That’s… a monster. “Never seen a Jolly Green Giant before, Captain?”
That just can’t be right. “Well, yes, but I’m not exactly HH-3 qualified. There must have been a mistake somewhere…”
“Your file said you received training for three different helicopter types, the HH-3 among them. No mistake at all, Captain.” Well, yes, okay, he’d gotten an introduction and he has three or four flight hours on a Jolly Green Giant under his belt but… he’s a Huey pilot. A goddamn gunship pilot who can fly combat, dust-off, everything that involves fast reaction, steady nerves and bad ass superhuman reflexes. He loves being a Huey pilot. He never wanted to be anything but a Huey pilot.
He fumbles around for words, trying to ignore Wells’s annoyed stare and Cadman’s curious gaze. “Look, sir, there really must have been a mix-up here or something. I haven’t been flying HH-3s in ages and…”
“You’re a chopper pilot, right?” Oh. That look on Lorne’s face… doesn’t look good?
Sensing that he’s walking straight into a deadly trap, he swallows and tries to be brave nonetheless. “Yes, sir, but…”
“So let’s fly this chopper.” For someone looking so relaxed just ten minutes ago, Lorne sure isn’t good with taking no for an answer now.
Still, he’s not going to go down without a fight. “Sir, I’m really not…”
“Get in and put your damn ass in front of the damn stick, Captain. That’s an order.” Okay, maybe he is.
“Yes, sir.” Damn, that can’t be a good way to start off a tour.
And Wells isn’t helping much either, hissing, “Way to go, Captain Idiot,” at him when they unload their baggage to carry it over the tarmac towards the chopper and what does she care about how he ruins his work relationship with his boss, anyway?
The only reason he doesn’t snap at her and tell her to keep her nose out of his damn business is that they’ve reached the monster of a chopper and that after a loud whistle from Lorne two guys jump down from the roof, Sergeant’s stripes on their arms. They’re wearing shades as well, one of them white and maybe in his late thirties or early forties and the other black and possibly in his late twenties. Lorne speaks up again. “Captain Kemp, Lieutenant Wells, these are Senior Master Sergeant Robert McPherson, crew chief and door gunner and Master Sergeant Will Meyers, Pararescue jumper and medic. Mac, Meyers, those are Captain Matthew Kemp, our new co-pilot and Lieutenant Jenna Wells, Captain Cadman’s new reporter.”
The Sergeants both stick out their hands and he moves to shake them, not sure how this is going to go. From the look of it, they must have been as long in Vietnam as Lorne and it occurs to him just now that he’s barging in a team that’s probably been through hell in the last twelve months. Just fucking great.
Oh, and there goes Lieutenant Wells ogling the monster chopper with a glint in her eyes that you usually see in girls in adverts for diamond engagement rings. She’s gonna be so disappointed when she gets one of those instead of her very own chopper, if she ever gets married.
Cadman seems to have seen it, too and the fact that she doesn’t comment on it, just looks a little amused as she puts her pilot helmet on - wait, why does she even have that and why are there an Air Force crest and the words “Off with one helluva roar!” elaborately painted on the front? - counts immensely in her favor. He might think Wells to be a bit of a nerd but that doesn’t mean he’s going to accept anyone actually calling her that to her face.
Anyway… good God, why is there the crest of the Women’s Army Corps on one side and the words “Property of Women’s Army Corps” painted on Lorne’s helmet? What the fuck is going on here? “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen helmet graffiti before, Captain.”
Dammit, is that guy psychic? Also, there’s no reason to sputter like he’s doing, “No, not… up close, sir, but it’s… um…”
“You got a call sign, Kemp?” Huh, what?
“Yes he does and it’s Hermit.” Jesus fucking Christ, Wells. Who gave you a damn headset?
And no, sir, there’s no reason to sound so derisive when saying, “Hermit, Captain?” while switching on the rotors and easing the monster into the air with a grace he’d never have associated with an HH-3.
He clenches his jaw and tries to sound final instead of pleading. “Don’t ask, sir.” Which, obviously, didn’t work at all.
Thankfully, Wells is so in awe of the HH-3 that she doesn’t sit down like any normal passenger aboard a chopper would do but keeps staggering around, distracting everyone from his stupid call sign and pestering both McPherson and Meyers with all kinds of technical questions about the monster. What really astounds him, though, is how readily both answer her and as far as he can hear from the fragments drifting through the concentration of having to fly unfamiliar aircraft over unfamiliar territory, they don’t sound nearly as annoyed as the guys at Cannon AFB did whenever Wells went to pepper them with her questions and observations.
The strange warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing someone not treating her like a freak for being more interested in the aircraft than in the guys flying them is pretty much disruptive to his flying and he decides to ignore it.
It’s not helping that Lorne is used well enough to this bird to throw around questions like, “Is it normal for Air Force women to be so overly interested in the technical properties of helicopters?” though.
He looks ahead, cursing himself for forgetting to pack his goddamn shades and squints into the sun while he tries to sound not too miffed with what Lorne just insinuated. “It sure is normal for this Air Force woman.”
“Oh, you guys have a history.” More a statement than a question and he gives Lorne bonus points for keeping his tone neutral instead of lewd. He’s just so tired of everyone thinking he let Wells into his Huey so she would let him into her pants. He has no interest whatsoever in her pants.
But just for caution’s sake, he decides to be non-committal. “Kind of.”
He expects Lorne to try and find out more about this “kind of” kind of history but the Major surprises him again, saying, “Is there any way I can get her to stop looking so longingly?”
Not really sure what Lorne just meant, he turns around to throw a look over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of Wells sitting on one of the empty cots in the HH-3’s cargo room, looking like a little girl that just saw the pony of her dreams. He can just barely keep from sighing. “There might be one…”
“Ah, I think I got an idea.” He… does? “Hey, Lieutenant, you ever saw a Giant’s controls?” Ah, where the hell is that going now?
“No, sir.” It’s kind of cute how Wells just tried to sound very confident and disinterested when even people who don’t know her could have heard the yearning fromm one mile away.
“Come on up and have a look.” And in that moment he just knows that he’ll follow Lorne into hell and back when he has to. He’d been ready to hate the guy for the entire twelve months just for implying that Wells wasn’t “normal” and then he goes and calls her up to the cockpit as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, just to stop her looking so longingly at all the beautiful controls that must seem like candy to her. That guy’s a fucking hero.
And Wells being Wells… she doesn’t wait for another invitation and comes crawling towards them, squeezing herself between Lorne and him and he can’t help keeping to throw her looks as she listens intently to Lorne explaining the controls, unconsciously biting her lip in deep concentration, just like she had when he’d let her have the controls of the Huey he flew at Cannon for a few minutes. And here he’d thought he was the only one who could give her that sparkle of absolute concentration and pleasure in her eyes.
The stab of jealousy that just gave him is the most ridiculous thing he ever experienced which is why he will never think of it again and keep on flying this monster instead.
It’s not exactly easy with Wells so close in proximity, radiating delight strong enough to power a small city for almost the entire ride to Tan Son Nhut but somehow he manages it and when Lorne puts his pair of shades into his hands with the words, “I expect them back as soon as you got yourself decent ones at the PX,” after exiting the Giant, he can’t help hoping that he might not miss the Hueys as much as he feared he would when he laid his eyes on the monster for the first time, after all.
After that, it’s off to camp registration and then the male officers’ BOQ first and off to the WAFs second and he’s pretty sure that if it were just them, Wells wouldn’t stop gushing about the flight. She looks ready to burst and when Lorne and Cadman have dropped them off at the PX after Cadman “ordering” them to join the “rest of the gang” at the local Vietnamese Air Force’s officers club tonight, he can’t fight the urge to say, “So… what do you think?”
Of course she immediately starts flooding him with technical data she gathered from the Sergeants and the greatness that is being allowed, even required to be a passenger in a chopper and maybe it’s the jet lag or the exhaustion of his first day in this strange, hot country but somehow, all of a sudden, it doesn’t bother him so much anymore. Maybe, just maybe being stationed in Vietnam with Jenna Wells of all people isn’t going to be so bad, after all. A guy can hope, can’t he?
~*~
TBC in Military Madness (Is Killing Your Country).