FanFic100: #068 Lightening
Holy crap. He nearly bought it. And he still can’t believe he didn’t. Lost his wingman though, and that really weighs him down. Jenkins had been one of the Daedalus pilots, but that doesn’t mean he’s just another number for him. He knows that technically this wasn’t his fault and that Jenkins was only in the wrong place at the wrong time, but for him every “in the wrong place at the wrong time” is one too many.
And then there’s his misfortune. During the fight he’d been not fully paying attention, only for a moment, and wham, one of the darts had managed to hit one of his engines. Yes, he’d been able to make up for the slip of attention with top-notch flying - as top-notch as one can fly with only one engine left, that is - after the hit and even shooting down a few darts until the Daedalus called them back, but… it irks him.
He simply shouldn’t have asked her right before taking off. Not that this fateful moment’s distraction had been because he’d pondered what her answer might be in a totally inappropriate moment, but the whole affair had left him with a certain… basic edginess. Positively not the best state of mind to enter a space battle. But when he’d been about to leave their quarters, he’d had this stupid feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong and he’d wanted to take a piece of her with him… tell her to wait for him, no matter what was about to happen and even though he knew she hates staying behind.
After the searing kiss… the question had simply slipped from his lips. All he’d wanted to say was something like “By the way… have dinner ready when I’m back.” Just to needle her a little and make that underlying worry radiating off her go away, but… something in him had made him say some totally different words. When he’d seen her nearly horrified deer in headlights look, the only thing he was capable off was covering up his own shock with a wayward grin and scampering out of their quarters. And ever since then, he keeps brooding over if he has managed to scare her off, if he was too fast with that - they’ve been together for only a couple of months - if that was probably one of the biggest mistakes he ever made…
Groaning, he leans his head back. In the 30 minutes since the Daedalus left the battle site, he has finished his post-flight and everything, but for some reason, he doesn’t want to leave the fighter just yet. Maybe… maybe he just doesn’t want to go back to the pilots’ locker room, because that would mean having to face all the others, seeing Jenkins’ locker… Huh, what’s the commotion at the entrance of the flight deck?
A little curious, he finally gets up from the spot under his F-302 he’d been hiding in from everyone and walks a little in the direction of the turmoil… but he doesn’t get very far. Out of the throng of people, a whirlwind with flying red hair emerges and comes dashing towards him with an inarticulate squeal of joy. In an instant, the whirlwind nearly knocks him over with jumping at him very unceremoniously.
He can barely keep his balance, much less since his assailant has now wrapped her legs around him and is kissing him wildly. Well… what else is there to do than embrace her and kiss her back? In the moment he does, nothing else than her matters to him anymore. Doesn’t matter they’re on the Daedalus’ flight deck, doesn’t matter that some of the pilots and flight mechanics around them are applauding and giving them wolf whistles and cat calls, doesn’t matter that he’s actually pretty tired from the space battle.
Then she stops kissing him, but only to utter a single word. “Yes,” she says, punctuating it with another softer and shorter kiss. “Yes, yes, yes,” she says again, accentuating every little word with another little kiss.
It takes a few seconds to get through to him what she actually means, but when realization dawns on him, a very silly grin spreads out over his face. “Yes as in yes, you’ll marry me?”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course, Major Dimwit. Oh… and I think you can put me down again.” Huh. She jumped him, didn’t she? Just for good measure, he gives her an extra squeeze before following her suggestion. As he looks at her again - her face a little flushed, her hair only loosely pulled back in a pony tail, her eyes sparkling with mirth and the true joy that he’s back again - the full impact of what just happened comes down on him. They’ll have a mountain of paper work in front of them now, but they’ve been there and done that already once. Much more important is that… he practically just entered the lifelong commitment everyone home already thought he’d forever abandoned in favor of his commitment to the Air Force.
He’d love to kiss her again but there’s still this teeny tiny bit that they’re standing on a very public flight deck. He clears his throat and lets go off her, turning back to their audience and calling out, “Alright people, show’s over. Get back to work.” He gives his best to bestow one of his meanest CO looks on a few maintenance technicians looking a little too interested in them and immediately people start scuttling off to work again, pretending nothing just happened.
She looks at him appreciating and a little gleeful, like she just had an idea she particularly likes. Uh-oh. “On the danger of your flyboy ego spontaneously self-combusting: You know… I wish you could wear all that flight gear to the wedding. There’s just… something about it.”
For some reason… the comment about his flyboy ego… reminds him of what he had been thinking of before she said the little word that turned his world upside down and made it right again in just one go. “About that flyboy ego… I think it suffered quite the blow today.”
She bends her head and looks at him again and he has the uncanny feeling that she can see right through his pretense of light irony. “Did it now? You really have to tell me about that one.” With that, she simply jerks her head toward the flight deck’s exit and tugs at his sleeve to make him follow her. After a little hesitation he does.
A few feet closer to the exit she gives his sleeve another tug and just raises her eyebrows expectantly at him. With a soundless sigh he finally starts telling her about the space battle and everything that happened. It’s still weighing him down, but at the same time… something deep inside him is nearly mad with joy that starting from now hopefully for the rest of his life there will be someone to make his burdens lighter and share hers with him.