Chuck "Saint" Whitman- OC- The Bar

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

It probably said something about Chuck Whitman's state of mind that it took him a good two minutes to realize that this *wasn't* the Officer's Club.

He wasn't any stranger to fatigue.  Anyone who couldn't be on the go for sixteen hours and still be at their peak performance wouldn't make it through their first carrier tour, and sometimes it felt

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[mm_lorna]

"Hey!"

Goddamn but he's hard to catch up with sometimes. For an old fart Whitman sures moves pretty fast.

The problem with Chuck's plan is that there are some things hard to forget, some impossible...

...and some just damn annoying.

She catches the door just before it swings shut, yanks it back open. If he was getting himself a drink, why not one for her, too?

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

Wherever this place is, it looks nice. Seems like it's quiet, cozy-

"Hey!"

-and apparently not far enough away from Anna Devlin. Oh well. Every bar's got to have something wrong with it.

But he's smiling a bit as he turns, a little crooked grin that he just can't seem to chase off his face. Because much as the crusty-CO part of his brain might grumble, the company isn't all that bad.

"Devlin." He watches her slide up beside him. "Shouldn't you off celebrating? War's over, and I thought the woman who won it would be off havin' some fun."

Pause.

"Of course, if you really don't have anything to do, I've got a pile of paperwork still sitting on my desk. The stuff at the bottom should be nicely aged by now."

[mm_lorna]

She makes a face. "I'd rather have some Scotch, if we're talking nicely aged. But when have you ever known me to be bored, sir? Besides," the face turns into a wide grin, "how could I really celebrate without buying the old man a drink or two first?"

There's a little dish of nuts in front of her; she pulls it forward and starts munching idly, looking around.

"...uh, sir? You guys remodel the OC? 's nice."

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

"Much as I'd like to take credit for all of this," Whitman gives the place a survey, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Devlin. But you know something, after the last two weeks I just want to put up my feet and have a drink. I don't really care where."

Speaking of which- he slides around the bar and looks. Yep. Cold beer in longneck bottles, just like the club back at-

(Wave that one off, Saint. You're here *not* to think about all that shit, right?)

So instead he just snags one, pops it open against the bar edge, and looks sideways at his pilot.

"Scotch already? Either I'm a bad influence or Koshiki is." And then he cracks a grin because- really- the image of Short being a bad influence on anybody isn't something he can really get his mind around.

[callsign_dice]

"As if he could hold Scotch," she scoffs, but there's a little grin on her face all the same, along with a little hint of admiration at her CO's ability to pop a beer open.

"How about one for the hero of the hour, Chief? Or, since Viper's not around, one for me?"

A cold beer would taste damn fine right about now. She sighs, stretches, hearing her neck pop. That can't be good.

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

"You weren't so damn bad yourself, says the debrief." Whitman reached back and grabbed another longneck, his fingers wiping trails of condensation off of it as he slides it along the bar. Technically, she's a minor, but he's been trusting Dice with two billion dollars worth of EDC property for three years now. A beer doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

Besides, he'd been starting to get a nagging, aching feeling that there were some conduct regulations somewhere in the book he hadn't let his kids violate yet. Can't have that.

"Don't let Taylor hear you call him the hero of the hour, though. You think I don't have enough big egos to deal with already?"

[callsign_dice]

"I was awesome," she amends, catching the bottle with one hand. There's a half second where she gives him a wary sort of glance and he deadpans a stare back at her, so she takes a swig.

And man oh man--they don't come better than cold brews after a hard day's work, and she'd be coming up with some catty little remark about Taylor herself if she hadn't just noticed that, yeah, they...really aren't anywhere near the Officer's Club, are they?

Resting her chin on her hand, keeping the other idle on the bottle, she takes a good long slow look around. It looks as casual as can be but she's taking in everything, and when she speaks again it's in a well, damn kind of way to Whitman.

"So...this your little secret, sir? Because I've always sort of wondered how you managed to keep sane."

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

He shakes his head.

"I just got here myself, Devlin. Never seen this place before in my life. Got no idea where it is. But it's got beer on ice, and that's enough for me right now."

He takes another sip, and goddamn that's good. His throat had been dry and cracked for hours as he waited for Blue Squadron to reappear on the DSTN. He'd been pacing, and public image to the contrary he usually wasn't that type. But the beer was washing that all away, and that was all right.

All right enough that he asks the question that's been in the back of his head for years, ever since the first real Stormwarden flights.

"Devlin...what was it like up there? Not the fighting and who shot who, but what's it like to take the big white bird up into space? Always wondered about that."

(And never got a chance to find out.)

[callsign_dice]

"...Sir?"

Is that...what the hell is that in Whitman's voice, behind the usual growl? She checks him out, confused. He's even sort of smiling a little, in a ...would that be wistful?

But he's serious. Dead serious. Even she can see that, no matter how obtuse Viper and Shadow and 'Bird and the rest think she is.

"Like nothing I've ever flown before," she says, finally, and honestly. "Baby's got power like you wouldn't believe. She feels damn near alive. There's nothing like feeling that purr."

She toys with the bottle, wondering how to put into words something she can barely recognize as a feeling. "But it's...safe, y'know? Like me and the 'Warden can take on anything, even all that nothing out there, and be just fine."

This is frustrating. She's not getting it right, and it's important somehow. She grimaces a little, and gives him a mutedly apologetic look.

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

He catches it, shrugs slightly.

"Guess it wasn't a fair question, really. Don't think I could tell anyone else what the old Super H was like. I just always wondered-"

(how the engines felt when they kicked in, hard)

(what the controls felt like under your fingertips, when she was dancing)

(What it was like to watch those screens and see the whole wide sky open up around you)

"how she'd handle, you know? I've flown the sim, but we both know that ain't the same."

He tries a grin, and it mostly works.

"But I do know how you can sink yourself into a good fighter until you're hers and she's yours, and you're both ten feet tall and rainin' fire. You really did fall in love with that bird, didn't you?"

He can relate. He loved his Super Hornet, he loved the 'Warden when he was working on her- the prom queen that got away. Just like-

Damn you, Saint, don't think about it.

[callsign_dice]

"Well, you know me," she says, wondering at it all. A bar appearing out of nowhere and Whitman waxing poetical doesn't even begin to cover the weirdness of today. "Give me a fast engine and something to shoot down and I'm happy."

She's lying and he knows she's lying and she knows he knows. It doesn't need to be said out loud, because he's got his pride and she's got hers, but it's enough they can sit and have a beer together and talk about the fighters they'd loved.

But then his face goes sad and then hard again, and she blinks at the change from over her beer bottle. "Something on your mind, sir?"

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

He starts, then looks up quickly.

"Nah, just a stray thought."

He's never been able to lie for shit.

[callsign_dice]

"Yeah right."

She lifts the bottle and arches an eyebrow at him in challenge.

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

Damn brat. Wonder if it's too late to rule by fear?

"Just thinking about the original Stormwarden test crew, back when this all started. Some of the people there, how it might have gone."

That's mostly true. Mostly. Well, how it might have gone with one blond-curled pilot in particular. Too bad she was a traitor and all, but still...

As much as he wants to say Hell with it, if you were meant to have a family the Navy would have issued you one, he can't quite make himself believe it.

[callsign_dice]

"Wow. That's..."

She's looking at Whitman, and it's not a new expression but it's one she'd usually guarded a little better, before.

(Before she shot down more enemies than she could count on both hands, before Seattle turned into a war zone, before, before.)

It's respect mixed with admiration mixed with something sort of like the blindly faithful love of a daughter or niece, shaken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Dice's feelings toward her CO are sort of complicated. "You've never talked about that before. What happened, anyway?"

[mm_ltcdrwhitman]

Whitman shrugs.

"It was Heaven on Earth for a while. All the planet's best fighter pilots in one place, taking their rides up and hassling with each other. It was hard work, finishing up the engineering, but all we had to do in the mornings was sleep, eat, and fly. Then-" he shrugs, "-then the whole thing went to hell, and all of a sudden we had to improvise a whole new training scheme to turn a bunch of snot-nosed kids into fighter pilots."

Talking mostly to himself, now.

"Some of us...didn't make the changeover well. At all. It shook a lot of people up, broke a lot of them apart. I don't think some of us ever really got over it."

He damn near hadn't. He'd been so angry. And Harm-

-wasn't going to stay out of his head, apparently. And the girl sitting next to him was getting disturbingly close to reading his mind.