You work as a Postal Clerk, where the war comes back in pieces, in envelopes, in lists, in the carefully intricate accounting of names that were still spoken, and those that no longer were, but more importantly the ones that stop appearing altogether. You’re grounded in the permanence of the ink.
Jeon Jeongguk, is one of the few who aren’t. A First Lieutenant Pilot who lives between takeoff and return, he has no patience for performance, no letters, no promises, nothing that might outlast the moment he’s in. It’s easier for him that way. Lighter.
World War II held an unforgiving greed, had a way of pressing life into something sharper. It took girls that still had the privilege of standing on the edge of something softer, and placed them into roles that demanded steadiness, that ordered their soft hands to stitch wounds, sort names and will life into soulless bodies. And the boys, the boys were handed wings and rifles and names that sounded older than they were, sent up into the sky before they’ve learnt the weight of staying. With whispered prayers derived from muscle memory, that their boys’ courage could be learned in the span of a morning. As though willing the distance between youth and survival to be crossed by boyish obedience alone. As though fear, if left unspoken, would disappear as another foolish notion in face of the disorder of 1944.
War has a way of giving you a map of somewhere distant, and declaring it enough.
You weren’t meant to meet beyond a passing moment on the wrong train, not in passing, not in any way that would leave a mark where the war hadn’t already, but the impulsive anonymous letters begin to bridge the distance between you.
But war has a way of intervening with even the smallest things. So, when silence from one end begins to mean something it hadn’t before, you’re both left questioning permanence, more intricately, what are you meant to hold onto, when nothing in 1944 is meant to last?
pairings: pilot!jjk x fem!postal-clerk!reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!jkk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war II, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air.
01 - THE FIRST TIME WE DIDN’T KNOW. - came out 24th of April 2026.
02 - IN INK AND IN PASSING - came out 28th of April
03 - COLLISION COURSE - came out 2nd of May, my favourite one yet! heavy ROM-COM vibes.
CHAPTER O4 - coming out 15th/20th of May
OTHER CHAPTERS - TBC…
to begin the taglist, just comment! please reblog it means everything!
this piece is for the yearners, you’ll hopefully feel this story as if you’ve lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please comment absolutely anything you want!
I love this fic 😭. What does it mean features taehyung ? It's pure angst which makes me love it more. Is tae going to be a big part of it? I can't wait for more ❤️.
hello love! ft. taehyung means it has taehyung in as a prominent character, for everyone that hasn’t seen the series ive based this on, the main character (Jeongguk in this piece) has a best friend, someone so close to him that he’s basically, in all sense of the word, a brother to him. taehyung plays a huge role in jeongguks character, they’re in eachothers orbits so deeply (platonic in this case) but he plays a huge and deep role on jeongguks emotions. i hope that sums it up without me spoiling later scenes. if not, ask me more and i’ll be so happy to go into more depth, i just don’t want to waffle too much incase that’s not what you wanted.
the angst is my favourite part, even though it sounds sadistic, as much as we’ve had three chapters landing happy, carefree environments for the characters, angst will hit you in the later chapters, mark my words. i don’t want anyone thinking that just because it’s about love that it won’t have heavy angst, it’s world war II, it’s devastating and it’s meant to be exactly that, so i’m so overly happy that the upcoming angst will sit well with you. i can’t wait for you to see it angel!
tae plays a huge role regardless, he’s basically just as much of a main character as jeongguk is, with them being so close, it’s hard to brush taes character under the rug, you’ll see in later chapters, he plays more of a role in the huge angsty ones, usually the ONE person jeongguk can turn to, someone he can have his emotions unguarded near, you’ll see !
honestly it’s meee that can’t wait for youu to see more, i appreciate you taking time to ask me this and questioning parts of this piece, much much love anonymous! 🤍
As life on base at Thorpe Abbotts settles into something familiar, an unexpected encounter with Jeongguk shifts the day, and night out with the girls at a crowded bar, reveals more than you’d intended to notice. Shifts things in ways neither of you quite acknowledge.
pairings: pilot jk x fem! postal-clerk reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O3 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 6.7k
average reading time - 37 minutes
─── [💌] THE ROM-COM CHAPTER IS FINALLY HERE. i hope you guys come to like this just as much as i do, i hope you see the difference from the different chapters to this, hopefully the next chapters going to be soppy romance, i’m trying to cover different vibes each chapter, ch1 = reminiscing, ch2 = slight nostalgia, ch3 = rom-com, ch4 = teeth-rotting romance, coming out 5/6th may 2026. i hope what you take away from this, is that things look different from everyone’s perspective, stop being so harsh on yourself. the only thing that’s gotten me through this is your comments, i hold so much love for your small thoughts! love you angels! back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O3 - COLLISION COURSE
On this particular morning, the room is louder, it’s already awake before you’re fully in it. Not chaotic, just thorough.
“You have three of the same shade.”
“I do not.”
“You do,” Adeline insists, already halfway across the room, holding up two lipsticks like evidence. “This one—“ she lifts one, “—and this one—“ another, “are identical.” The lipstick cases are dramatically drawn up in the air, a fraction past where her widened eyes are.
“They are not identical.”
“They are identical.”
“They are entirely different.”
“They’re both red.”
“One is deeper.”
“They’re both red, Elsie.”
A quiet snort comes from somewhere behind you. “You’re both unbearable, that’s what.” someone mumbles.
Elsie reaches over, plucking one from Adeline’s hand. “This is evening.”
“And the other?”
“Late evening.”
Adeline’s face drops, her hands that are holding the lipsticks, drop from the air.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not a distinction,” Adeline says, turning with both lipsticks raised back up again. “That’s the same mistake twice.”
“It isn’t a mistake.”
“It is when no one can tell the difference.”
“You can’t tell the difference, A.”
“No, no one can tell the difference.”
You don’t mean to smile and you apparently don’t stop it quickly enough.
Adeline catches it immediately.
“Oh, don’t do that.” Her brows start to scrunch, her face slowly following.
“Do what?” you reply, not looking up, though guilty amusement evident in your raised brow.
“That—“ she gestures vaguely toward your face, “—that quiet little agreement. It encourages her.”
“Elsie dear, you’ve organised them by time of day.”
“That’s just what being practical is, Adeline.”
“That’s concerning.”
Another ripple of quiet laughter follows, softer this time. Familiar.
You shift the stack of letters you didn’t finish last night, in your hands, aligning the edges without thinking, thumb pressing slightly along the paper as though it might settle something beyond itself.
“Anyway,” Adeline says, abandoning the lipsticks entirely now, “what’s the plan today? Please don’t say ‘more of the same’, good God, i’ll lose the will to live.”
“It’s more of the same,” Elsie replies.
“I hate that for me.”
Millie finally stands, smoothing her skirt in quick, unnecessary motions. “You always hate it. You just complain differently each time.”
“That’s called variety.”
“No, it’s called repetition.”
Adeline is still looking at Millie but throws her hand up to point at Elsie, “You’re becoming her.”
“I am not.”
“You are—“
“Alright, alright, let’s stop now, it’s too early in the morning for this. Move the topic along.” Elsie voices, an exhausted, humoured sigh leaving her.
Adeline’s ready to rebut what she said, mouth already opening.
“Jeon’s lot came back yesterday.” Elsie blurts.
It slips in like it belongs there. No build-up. No emphasis.
The room doesn’t stop, just slightly tilts.
“Did they?” Millie asks, too quickly to be uninterested.
“Mm,” Elsie hums. “Late.”
“Heard it wasn’t clean.”
“It never is.”
Adeline exhales softly through her nose, not quite a laugh. “That’s reassuring.”
You don’t look up, not straight away. Your fingers move, lift, place. The same rhythm. You try tuning out the conversation, try pushing anything into your mind to take the place that his presence is etching there.
“Which one’s Jeon?” Millie asks, lip pouted, glancing between them.
Adeline tilts her head slightly. “You’d know.”
“Why would I know?”
“You just would.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
You blink once, hard. With your head still down, you try adjusting the edge of the stack again but it doesn’t need adjusting.
“Is he the loud one?” Millie continues.
“There are several loud ones.”
“The worse kind.”
“The only kind.” Adeline corrects, eyebrows arched high, lips pursed in an all-knowing look.
Elsie finally looks up. Briefly. Her gaze flicks past them, then to you. Then away again.
“He’s not the worst of them,” she says.
A pause. Small, but it holds.
“How would you know?” Adeline asks lightly with light confusion fluttering across her face.
Elsie shrugs once. “You hear things.”
“You listen too much, E.”
“Or maybe, you don’t listen enough.”
Millie leans in slightly. “So which one is he?”
Another beat. Another interval for your mind to try compose itself.
Elsie doesn’t answer. Not directly.
“You’ll know,” she says instead.
Adeline smiles at that. Slow. Knowing.
“Oh, that’s irritating,” she mummers, with a light roll of her eyes, picking up her bag before heading toward the door, her now overly smoothed-down nurse uniform sitting just right where she’s adjusted it once too many times.
You keep your eyes on the paper bundle as you stand up, ready to follow Millie’s path to the door. You don’t chirp in. You don’t ask. But something, quietly and inconveniently, has already shifted.
Not enough to name. Not enough to matter.
Just enough that, as you fall into step behind the others, the rhythm you’d settled into, no longer feels entirely your own.
“Bar later?” Millie says from where she’s walking in-front of you, half over her shoulder, half to no one in particular.
Adeline lets out a soft breath that almost passes as a laugh. “If Matron doesn’t decide we’ve all committed some unforgivable offence by just existing.”
“She might,” Elsie adds, now stood up, adjusting the cuff of her sleeve with quiet precision. “She’s been looking for a reason all week.”
“That’s because you gave her one,” Adeline replies.
“I gave her nothing.”
“You reorganised her filing system without asking.”
“It was inefficient.”
“It was not yours.”
A pause.
“Well,” Millie says lightly, reaching for the door, “We’ll go anyway, I want to see each and every one of you there, girls.”
No one agrees. No one refuses. And somehow, that feels like an answer.
Outside, the base spills into motion.
Jeeps rattle past in uneven bursts, tyres biting into loose gravel, a horn sounding once, ignored. Someone jogs across your path with a clipboard clutched too tightly, nearly colliding with a pair of mechanics hauling a crate between them, their sleeves already darkened with oil. Laughter breaks out somewhere to your right, cut short by a sharp call of a name that doesn’t get answered the first time.
A line of pilots crosses ahead, cutting through the flow like they’ve already decided where they’re meant to be before anyone else has caught up to it. One of them walks backwards mid-conversation, gesturing wildly, nearly walking straight into a passing officer who doesn’t even slow.
Further out, a bicycle weaves recklessly between it all, earning a shouted insult and a half-hearted wave in return.
No one stops. Not properly. Everything just moves around everything else.
Millie falls into step beside you without asking, the click-clacks of yours and her low-heeled shoes matching coincidentally.
“You are coming later,” she says, as though the conversation has already been decided.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t.” You take a single look at her by your side, then back to the vast base runway ahead of you.
“You didn’t say you were.”
“That’s not the same thing.” A small laugh from you escapes naturally.
“It is to me.”
You glance at her briefly, again. “That explains a lot.”
A soft smile takes place on your face at her antics.
She nudges your arm lightly with hers as you walk. “You need it.”
“I don’t.”
“You really do.”
“I don’t.” You say firmly, even despite your growing smile.
“You’ve been reading other people’s lives for weeks,” she says. “At some point you have to have one of your own.”
With Millie, it never comes from anywhere complicated. She says what she thinks and leaves it there, light, unexamined.
But your smile doesn’t quite hold. Not because of her, just the shape of it. The idea of it.
Of spending your days sorting through other people’s lives, holding them briefly in your hands, only to set them aside again without ever touching your own.
It isn’t new. It has crossed your mind before, faint enough to ignore, easy enough to place beneath something else. But hearing it said, out loud, simple as that, it doesn’t pass the same way. It stays. Just slightly longer than it ever has before.
You don’t answer to what she says, caught up in yourself.
The path widens slightly as you move further across the base, splitting into smaller directions, people crossing through them without hesitation, each step already decided before it’s taken.
Ahead, a group gathers.
You don’t mean to look, but you do.
Pilots.
Easy to tell. Not just the uniforms, but by the way they carry themselves. Looser. Louder. Like the rules don’t sit quite as tightly on them.
And then, him.
Not set apart. Not standing ahead.
Just, in the middle.
One of them is saying something, animated, hands moving as he talks, the others reacting in bursts of ‘Cart this’, ‘Evans that’, laughter, interruptions, the kind of overlapping noise that doesn’t wait its turn.
Jeongguk leans slightly into it, head tipped just enough, a grin that comes easy, unconfined.
It’s different from the train.
This version of him doesn’t hold back.
You look away first.
“You see?” Millie says quietly beside you, her head tilting towards your shoulder, not bothering to hide it. “I told you.”
“Well, I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.”
You keep walking, eyes steady ahead of you, even if hers aren’t.
After precisely four steps, “Which one?” she presses.
You don’t answer.
“Fine,” she says lightly, a small shrug taking place in the corner of your eyes. “Keep your secrets.”
You reach the point where the path splits. Her direction. Yours.
“I’ll come find you later,” she says, already half-turning.
“You don’t know where I’ll be.”
“I’ll manage.”
A small pause.
“Try not to disappear,” she adds walking backwards and half-shouting from her distance.
“I won’t.” You reply with the same half-shout.
You’ve both turned away from each-other at this point, when she murmurs a short, “You will.” to herself with a delicate smile, something you don’t quite catch.
You continue forward, reach the corridor to your office, then stop.
A thought. Small. Immediate.
You pull your bag up by its straps, from where it’s hanging lower.
You check your bag. Once. Nothing.
“…Right,” you whisper under your breath.
You turn back.
The corridor is narrower than it needs to be, or perhaps it only feels that way when people insist on moving through it all at once.
You’re halfway through it, a stack of files balanced more carefully than you’d like to admit, attention split between the names on the top sheet and the sound of someone calling after you from somewhere behind.
You’re not paying enough attention. That’s the first mistake. The second, turning the corner too quickly.
You turn the corner—
and collide.
Not hard. Just enough.
Your shoulder catches a chest, the papers slip before you can stop them, edges catching against one another before scattering cleanly to the floor.
A beat.
Silence, brief and misplaced.
Then—
“Well,” a voice says, even, almost thoughtful. “That seems inefficient.”
You blink once, looking down at the mess at your feet before lifting your gaze.
He’s already looking at you.
Of course he is.
There’s no hesitation in him, no flicker of apology waiting to land. Just that same steady, unreadable ease, as though the moment has arranged itself around him rather than the other way around.
“You walked into me,” you say, crouching to gather the papers, tone level but not entirely unbothered.
“I don’t think that’s accurate.”
You let out a quiet breath through your nose, stacking what you can without looking at him properly.
“No?”
“No,” he says, just as simply. “You were in the way.”
That earns it, a glance.
Not sharp, not surprised. Just enough to meet Jeongguks eyes this time.
“And you,” you reply, smoothing one of the creased edges with your thumb, “were apparently aiming.”
The corner of his mouth shifts, not quite a smile, but close enough to recognise the shape of one.
“My bad, darling.”
A pause settles, not awkward, just there how it would be, in the midst of a busy corridor.
You reach for the last sheet at the same moment he does. His hand stills, just slightly, before pulling back, letting you take it.
It’s small. Almost nothing.
You straighten, papers gathered once more, adjusting them into something that resembles order.
He watches you do it.
Not in a way that feels invasive, not quite curious either. Just, present.
“You’re—“ he starts.
“Careful.” you cut in lightly, not looking up as you align the corners.
“—on the wrong base this time?” an easy furrow finds itself between his brows, not deep enough to be concern, just habit, like his face knows how to react before he decides to.
You glance at him then, properly this time, one brow lifting just slightly.
And there it is again, that same looseness about him. Not careless, not quite. Just, unbothered in a way that doesn’t feel accidental.
His jacket sits slightly open at the collar, like he’d fixed it once and decided that was enough. Sleeves worn just enough to suggest use, not care. There’s something easy in the way he stands, weight settled like he’s exactly where he expects to be, like the space adjusts around him rather than the other way round.
“You remember that, Lieutenant?”
“Mm,” he hums, shifting his weight just slightly, “Hard to forget someone so committed to poor decisions.”
There it is, that look.
Not quite a grin, not quite restrained either. Something that lingers at the corner of his mouth like it might tip either way depending on how far you let it go.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“For you?” he asks.
“For both of us, I imagine.”
That does it. A real smile this time, brief but it lands properly. It softens something in his face, takes the edge off the smugness without removing it entirely.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought you handled the last mistake quite well.”
“The wrong train?” you say.
“Wrong train,” he affirmatively repeats.
A beat.
You hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary and this time, you notice more. The faint mark near his lips. The way his eyes don’t quite stay still when listening, like he’s always tracking something just beyond what’s being said.
Something displaces, quiet but there.
And for a fleeting second, he notices it too. The pause. The way you don’t look away immediately. It catches somewhere, not enough to name but enough to register.
Theres movement around you again, people passing, voices cutting through the space, but it feels slightly removed for a moment, like the noise belongs somewhere just behind the two of you.
“Well,” he adds, a slight tilt of his head, “you’re making a habit of this.”
You glance down briefly at the papers in your hands, then back at him. “Except, it’s you that seems to be in the way more often than I’d expect.”
“Where’s the fun in not being in your way?”
You almost smile.
“I mean, you’ve made quite the impression.” he continues, easy now, a small nod towards you.
You tilt your head a fraction. “By getting on the wrong train?” your teeth catch your bottom lip in feigned confusion.
“It’s a strong opening.”
A small humoured breath leaves you, almost a laugh but not entirely.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Please do.”
Just as a pause is about to settle, “So,” he says, like the thought has only just occurred to him, “you’ve found your way around Thorpe Abbotts then, i’m guessing.”
You glance past him briefly, towards the stretch of base behind.
“Something like that.”
“Office work?”
You look back at him, the corner of your mouth lifting in astonishment, “You remember much more than you let on.”
He huffs a quiet breath, something almost amused. “I remember what’s useful.”
“And was I, Lieutenant?”
That earns something sharper, more deliberate. His gaze settles properly now.
“Jeongguk,” he corrects, easy, like it’s nothing.
You glance at the name on his uniform, again. You already knew.
“Right,” you say. A beat. “I’ll try not to forget this time.”
There’s the faintest flicker of something in his expression at that, interest maybe, possibly something else entirely.
“I’d be disappointed if you did.”
Before you can answer, a voice cuts from down the corridor—
“Jeon!”
He doesn’t look away from you immediately, just lifts a hand slightly in acknowledgment.
“Hold that thought,” he says, though it doesn’t feel like a request.
“I wrot—“ just as he’s about to begin saying the next thing, another voice, closer now—
“Jeongguk, move, we’re needed—“
He exhales lightly, something between a sigh and a laugh.
“Duty calls.”
“So I’ve heard.”
A brief pause. His eyes scanning your face in a once-over. Then, “I suppose I’ll see you around,”
Again, it doesn’t seem like a question. You shift the papers once in your hands, steadying them.
“You might.”
That almost-smile again.
“Try not to get lost.”
You meet it, just enough.
“No promises, Jeongguk”
Another second, just one, where something more could be said.
Then, he steps back, turning as the others close in around him, conversation picking up where it must have left off before you existed in it.
And just like that, he’s folded back into motion, Into noise. Into everything else.
You stand there a moment longer than you should.
Then someone brushes past your shoulder, muttering an apology you don't quite catch, and the corridor returns all at once. You adjust the papers again, even though they're already straight and continue on, in the opposite direction to him.
As if nothing has happened.
As if something hasn't.
Unbeknownst to you, Jeongguk takes a look over his shoulders, exactly when he knows you’ve walked away, and for a moment, he just watches you go, his head tilted the whole time, like he’s trying to place something that doesn’t quite sit where it should.
Then, a quiet breath through his nose. “…Right.”
After a moment, Jeongguk falls a step or two in front of them. He doesn’t get far.
“Oi—Romeo!”
He doesn’t stop. That’s his first mistake.
“What was that?” Taehyung calls, already grinning, falling into step beside him. “You actually having a conversation?”
“Didn’t think he knew how,” Carter adds from behind.
Jeongguk exhales lightly through his nose, not slowing his pace. “I do when it’s worth it.”
That lands.
“Oho—“ Taehyung lets out, looking over his shoulder toward the rest of the boys behind him, whilst nudging Jeongguk. “Hear that?”
“Careful,” Mills cuts in, “he might start writing letters next.”
A small ripple of laughter breaks out.
Jeongguk shakes his head once, slightly at that, but there’s something there now, something just off his usual rhythm.
Taehyung catches it. Of course he does.
“…You’ve either wrote one or you’re thinking about it,” he says, quieter this time, intentionally between just them.
Jeongguk doesn’t answer.
Which is answer enough.
Taehyung grins, wider now. “God help us.”
————
The hours that follow make the office quieter than it should be, as if for every minute that passes, time takes ten-fold of it. Or maybe you brought that quiet in with you.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor as you pull yourself closer to the desk over time, papers waiting where you’d left them in the morning, untouched, unchanged.
When you notice the light that’s still peaking through the window, falling differently on the paper you’re working on, you sit up. For the first time in hours, you look up, drawn not by thought but by instinct, toward the dusty ledge of the window. And for a moment, you don’t move.
Then it passes.
There are only a few letters left.
So you lower your eyes again, just as quickly as you’d lost it, fingers finding their rhythm once more as if nothing had interrupted them at all.
Lift. Read. Redact. Sort. Place.
It comes back easily. Too easily. Ink to ink. Names to names. Lives reduced to something that can be folded, stamped and sent away.
Until, you stop.
Not because of the name. Never because of the name. Because of the way it’s written.
‘My darling,’
Your eyes move, steady at first.
‘I hope this reaches you before anything else does.’
A small crease takes place between your brows.
You’ve read this before, not these words, but this shape of them. Careful. Controlled. Missing something.
Your thumb presses lightly into the edge of the paper as you continue.
‘I have been told to keep this brief, so I will try, though you know I’ve never been very good at that.’
There’s that carefulness again, that tip-toeing around what matters.
‘Time is passing strangely here. Days feel like hours until they don’t, and then it seems weeks have gone without me noticing at all.’
Your fingers are digging into your palm now, nails carving half-moons into the skin.
‘I keep thinking of the last morning before I left, how you stood in the doorway with your hair still undone, saying something I didn’t quite catch because I was already halfway out. I’ve been trying to remember it properly, but it won’t come back the way it should.’
Your brows furrow deeper.
‘I think I assumed there would be time to ask you again.’
Your lip twitches as you try to swallow. Not noticeably, just enough.
Your eyes continue.
‘They tell us not to write much about where we are or what we’re doing. I suppose that makes sense. There are things here I wouldn’t know how to explain even if I could.’
A line break, shorter now.
‘If you don’t hear from me again, I don’t want you to think it was because I didn’t try.’
Your hand falls still, nails lift from their etched dips in your palm.
‘It only means—‘
The sentence ends there.
Not finished. Not crossed out. Just, left.
Your eyes linger on it longer than it should.
Then drops, almost reluctantly, to the final line squeezed beneath, scrawled smaller, as if added after everything else had already been decided.
‘I should have stayed a moment longer.’
Silence. Pure unfiltered silence, not in the room. In you.
Instinctively, your body mulls over with trembling softness as you move the tops of your fingers to rest at the edge of the paper once again.
Then, as careful as your body allows, you turn the page over.
Nothing.
So, your fingers naturally trace the indent that the words on the front have left, hollowed out on the back. Feeling the indentation of the words rather than reading them now.
You don’t reach for the next letter.
You sit with this one.
And you don’t know how long you sit there for, until—
a knock.
You don’t look up immediately. But another knock lands on the doorframe straight-away, lighter this time.
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken root in there,” Millie’s voice carries through, already half-amused.
You look back down at the paper in your hands, then at the small stack beside you, then at nothing in particular.
“This looks promising,” she says, stepping in without waiting. “Come on.”
You look at up at her from where she’s stood, leaning against the open doorframe. Then back at the stack.
“I still have—“
“You will always still have,” she cuts in. “That’s the problem.”
A beat.
You don’t argue. Instead, you gather what’s left into something resembling order, aligning the edges once, twice, before leaving them where they are. The only paper you set aside is the one you read last, you move it, not atop the pile, just besides it.
“Good,” Millie says, satisfied, already turning back toward the door. “I refuse to let you spend another evening reading about other people’s tragedies.”
You pause only a second longer, eyes flicking once to the letter you set aside, then you finally stand.
And follow.
───
By the time you reach the bunks, you’ve already worn yourself thin trying to convince Millie you’re tired. Tired enough to be left alone, at least for tonight.
It doesn’t take.
“You’re coming,” she says, already halfway through changing, blouse pulled over her head with little regard for the argument.
“Millie, it’s just tonight—”
“No,” she cuts in, voice muffled briefly before reappearing, sharper now. “Not tonight. No chance.”
And so, you’re here.
The bar is louder than it has any right to be.
Not polished, not orderly, just thoroughly alive. Chairs scraping, boots knocking into table legs, voices overlapping without waiting their turn. Someone laughs too loudly near the back, another voice rising over it in mock argument. Glass meets wood in uneven rhythm. The kind of noise that doesn’t demand attention, only fills the space so nothing else has to.
It feels like something just short of reckless.
“You’re late,” Adeline says immediately, though she’s smiling when she does.
“I wasn’t coming.”
“And yet,” Elsie adds, not looking up, her fingers slow around the base of her glass, turning it in small, absent circles, “here you are.”
The bench is slightly sticky beneath your palms when you steady yourself, dress swaying, the table uneven enough that your glass tilts before it settles. Elsie presses a drink into your hand before you can refuse it, her movements efficient, practised.
You let it happen.
Three drinks in, the noise has shifted from something you’re aware of, to something that presses at the edges of everything.
Not overwhelming. Just inescapable.
From across the room, it’s worse.
“What are we doing, gentlemen— what is this?” Taehyung’s tipsy voice cuts through the noise, one hand thrown out toward the table like he’s presenting a spectacle that’s far grander than it is.
“It’s called entertainment, Tex,” Carter shoots back, not looking up from where he’s lining up a dart with far too much concentration.
“It’s called missing, Cart,” Mills adds, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve been ‘lining that up’ for the last five minutes.”
“I’m calculating.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Same thing.”
A small burst of laughter follows.
Then, Jeongguk pushes forward through them.
“Move,” he says, not forceful, just loud enough to be obeyed.
“Here he is,” Evan mutters. “Good God.”
“Gentlemen,” Jeongguk announces, dragging a hand through his hair, already half-smiling like he knows exactly how this ends, “you’re embarrassing yourselves.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Taehyung says, stepping aside just enough.
You don’t realise you’ve gone still until Adeline’s elbow brushes yours.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she murmurs.
“Do what?”
“That,” she says, glancing past you. “Whatever that is.”
You try looking away, to the girls, to your drink, you truly do. But the room doesn’t quite let you.
Jeongguk grabs an apple off the table.
Turns it once in his hand.
Then, with zero hesitation,
“Whoo!”
It’s loud. Sharp. Completely unnecessary.
The room reacts anyway.
“Sit down—sit down, you idiot—” Cart starts. Too late.
Jeongguk’s already stepping back, planting himself against the wall, tossing the apple once before setting it in place, on-top of his head.
“You miss Cart,” he says, pointing lazily at Carter with two fingers, “I’ll make sure you’re at the back of any formation for the next two months.”
Jeongguks hand is large enough to cover his whole face when it comes up. The only movement being where he separates his pointer finger and middle finger, a make-shift peephole for his eyes.
“Jeon—” Taehyung starts, laughing now, already knowing this is going badly.
“Relax, Tex,” Jeongguk cuts in, easy, cocky. “You worry too much.”
“Take the shot!” someone shouts from behind.
Carter exhales sharply. Throws the dart.
Your fingers twitch once around your glass.
Thunk.
The apple splits. Half of it drops. The other barely shifts.
The table erupts.
Jeongguk pushes himself off the wall, looking down at the apple like it personally offended him.
He’s there, yes, in the familiar yellow sheepskin jacket, but it’s not like before.
He isn’t contained in a moment or a conversation. Not something you can place neatly into memory. He’s louder. Looser. Surrounded.
He steps forward like he belongs there and the room shifts to accommodate him. Sharp. Unrestrained.
Mumbles of the conversation hit your ears in paused moments.
You catch the “Bit off,” you catch the laughter. Easy and effortless—
“Bit off?” Mills repeats. “You’re still alive.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that’s off.” Taehyung adds on, laughing.
“Alright, who’s next?” Evans calls.
“Not him,” Taehyung says immediately. “He’s had enough.”
“I’ve had exactly enough,” Jeongguk corrects, already reaching for someone’s drink that isn’t his.
“That’s not yours—”
“Mhm.” he hums as best he can with his head tipped back.
It doesn’t match anything you’ve seen of him before. Not the train. Not the corridor. This is different.
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath after the drink, something close to a laugh, rubbing briefly at the back of his neck as the moment dissolves into something else, another story, another voice, another shift in the room.
It moves quickly. It always does.
Because you’re still watching, you also catch the girl approaching him.
Someone steps into his space and he lets them.
A girl, familiar enough in the way most faces here become. She’s smiling before she speaks, already leaning in like she expects to be let closer.
“You’re insane.” She blinks up at him, not over-dramatically, just with quiet intention, certain.
“I’ve heard worse.”
“You could’ve been hurt.”
He glances at her then.
Not dismissive. Not interested.
Just enough to answer.
“I wasn’t.”
She stays anyway. They usually do.
It doesn’t require much from him, just the right responses, spaced out enough to pass as attention. A nod here. A word there. Nothing that asks him to give more than he intends to.
Her hand brushes his sleeve.
From where you stand, it looks like he leans down to hear her better.
You look away, too quickly, then back.
He shifts, barely noticeable. Not pulling away. Just not staying where she expects him to be.
The conversation carries on around them, changing shape without asking permission.
Your hands grip glass so tight, the condensation trickles up and over the path of your fingers, as if reluctant to break up the moment.
From the opposite side of the room, it also looks like something.
But, Taehyung notices first. Of course he does.
He watches the interaction for exactly two seconds before muttering to Mills, “He’s not even listening.”
Mills glances over.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Back with Jeongguk, the girl’s still talking. Still trying. Still leaning in.
He nods once.
Another half-second too late.
“Right,” he says.
Wrong response. Doesn’t matter.
Her hand lingers, but he shifts. Not obvious. Just enough.
Taehyung smirks.
“There it is.”
“Jeon!” Cart calls out again. “You flirtin’ or surviving over there?”
Jeongguk doesn’t look at him.
“Multitasking.”
“Poorly!”
“Better than you throw.” Jeongguk says, a mumble more to himself and the boys closest in distance to him.
But the room reacts again, laughter, shouting, noise folding over itself.
“Come on,” Millie says, tugging lightly at your sleeve. “If you’re going to pretend you’re not interested, at least do it closer.”
“I’m not—“ you begin.
But you let her pull you a few steps further in.
And somewhere in it, he looks up.
And then, something catches in his eyes. Not a sound. Not a name.
Just, movement. He looks up. Not necessarily searching, neither expecting to find anything.
And there you are.
Across the room.
It throws something off, only slightly.
“—Jeon?” He looks down. The girl, still there, still talking.
He hadn’t caught a word.
“You look busy.”
A beat.
“Something like that.”
“You want a drink?” she offers after momentary silence.
He looks past her again
It takes a second. Not to recognise you, but to place you here.
In this.
In the noise, the light, the movement.
Not in a train compartment or a corridor halfway between somewhere and somewhere else.
Not in memory.
Everything else stays loud. But that moment caught by Jeongguk, doesn’t.
“…Maybe later,” he says.
It’s not a yes. She takes it like one anyway, but he’s already half-turned.
───
In a sense, you see it before it happens. The shift, the ease of it.
She steps in close. Too close.
‘You’re insane.’
You look away, your finger twitching at the thought, mind lagging behind your body.
It looks easy, that’s the worst part.
Like it requires nothing from him, like it happens often.
Adeline watches you now instead of him.
“Oh, this is excellent,” she mutters.
“Don’t.” Elsie nudges her.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
He nods at something the girl says. Late. Slightly off.
You notice. You don’t know why you notice.
Her hand rests against his arm. He shifts. Barely.
Your gaze lingers a second longer.
“…he’s not even listening,” someone says near him.
You don’t hear who. You don’t need to.
You look down at your drink, at the pleats in your dress, at anything.
Then, back up.
And this time, he’s looking at you.
Not by accident.
The noise doesn’t stop. Nothing changes.
But the moment, holds.
No smile. No gesture.
Just, recognition. Again.
Then, someone pulls him away “Jeon, you’re up again—“
The moment breaks. Just like that. The room rushes back in.
He doesn't look for you again. Doesn't need to. He already knows where you are. And somehow, that's worse, for him or for you, you don’t know.
You don’t realise, not at first, that you’re still looking at the space he left behind. As if something of him is still there. As if looking long enough would profess him again, a minute longer than these fleeting moments. This time with that same loose version of him from tonight.
Adeline leans in immediately.
“Careful,” Adeline murmurs from behind your shoulder, as she joins you appearing from nowhere. “They’re contagious.”
You don’t look at her.
“Who?”
She tilts her chin slightly, you don’t follow it.
“Pilots,” she says.
Millie laughs. “Too late for that.”
“Stop, A.” you say, shaking your head faintly, though there’s no real weight behind it.
“Jeon’s worst than most,” Adeline adds, almost thoughtfully.
That, you don’t react to.
“Is he?” Millie asks, far too interested.
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “The kind that knows it.”
Noise swells back in, quick to cover what just was. The night carries on, and by the time you leave, the cooler and quieter air feels unfamiliar.
The door swings shut behind you, cutting the noise in half, though it still spills faintly into the night, laughter trailing after you like something unfinished.
“It’s freezing,” Elsie mutters, teeth already grinding, she pulls her coat tighter around herself.
“It’s refreshing,” Millie corrects.
“It’s cold,” Elsie repeats.
Adeline says nothing at first. She just looks at you.
You feel it brush over you.
“What?” you ask, adjusting your sleeve, though there’s nothing wrong with it.
“Nothing,” she says.
A beat.
“Absolutely nothing.”
Millie snorts. “That’s worse.”
You glance between them. “I don’t know what you think you’ve seen—”
“Oh, we haven’t seen anything,” Adeline cuts in lightly.
Elsie hums. “Not a thing.”
Millie nods, far too eager. “No, no. Completely uneventful evening.”
You let out a small breath, something between a laugh and disbelief.
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” Adeline says, stepping down off the curb, “you came out anyway.”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“Mm,” Elsie cuts in, a quiet sound, but pointed.
You stop walking for half a second.
Just enough for them to notice.
“Oh, this is excellent,” Millie murmurs, looping her arm through yours before you can move ahead of them. “She’s thinking about it.”
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
“Dangerous,” Adeline says.
“For who?” you shoot back.
All three of them exchange a look.
“For you,” Elsie says simply.
You scoff softly, though it doesn’t quite land.
“That’s dramatic.”
“Is it?” Adeline tilts her head slightly. “Because from where I was standing—”
“Please, you were standing too far away to make any kind of observation, A.”
“I was standing exactly where I needed to be.”
Millie laughs under her breath. “You didn’t even blink,” she adds.
At that, you falter.
“I’m sorry, what?” you say, nose and eyebrows scrunched in slight confusion.
“Not once,” Elsie says.
“That’s not even possible.”
“It is when you’re staring,” Adeline replies.
“I wasn’t staring.”
They all look at you again.
You sigh.
“Even if I was,” you say, a touch sharper now, “Is there a problem?”
“Of course not,” Millie agrees immediately.
Too quickly.
“Nothing ever is a problem,” Elsie adds.
Adeline smiles, slow and knowing.
“Especially not Lieutenants who put apples on their heads in crowded bars.”
That, you don’t respond to, finding no worth in debating the notion.
You just keep walking.
They let you. For a few steps.
Then—
“So,” Millie says, lighter now, like she’s moved on, but if you look close enough at the twitch in her chin, you’ll find she hasn’t moved on. “are we going back tomorrow?”
You glance at her.
“No.”
A beat.
“…probably not.” you add, eyes downcast.
Three quiet smiles pass between them.
You don’t see them.
Instead, you focus on the last few steps toward the building, closing the distance with quiet intent, like it might settle something if you just keep moving.
Inside, heels tap against the floorboards, coats are shrugged off, the room reshapes itself around your return with practiced ease. It doesn’t take long for all of you to fall back into routine.
Millie’s already tossing her scarf somewhere it won’t stay. Elsie bends at the edge of her bed, slipping off her shoes with a quiet exhale. Adeline crosses to the window, pushing it shut with a firm hand like it had any business being open at all.
Then, “Oh, girls. Post.”
It isn’t announced like it matters. It always is. The room shifts anyways. Not dramatically, just an unmarked awareness.
Adeline is already halfway across the room before the rest of you properly look up.
“Oh, don’t pretend you weren’t waiting,” she says, reaching for the small stack before it’s fully handed over.
“I wasn’t,” Elsie replies, not moving from her bed.
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were reorganising your things.”
“I like things organised.”
“You only like things organised when you’re avoiding something.”
A quiet laugh moves through the room.
“Go on then,” someone says from behind you. “Let’s have it.”
Adeline flips through the envelopes like she’s dealing cards.
“Alright, let’s see who’s loved today.”
“Adeline—”
“Obviously.”
“That was quick.”
“I’m efficient.”
She doesn’t open it immediately, just holds it and smiles at it with a new-found fondness.
“From who?” Elsie asks, finally looking up.
Adeline tilts the envelope slightly, as if considering whether to answer.
“Oh, thank God,” Millie says immediately, snatching it from the pile. “If I’d gone another day without hearing from him, I might’ve had to develop a personality.”
“You should try that anyway,” someone mutters.
Millie ignores it, already opening her letter, scanning it too quickly to be taking anything in.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
“He’s alive.”
“Romantic.”
“That’s enough.”
A pause.
Then, “He says he misses me.”
Adeline softens, just slightly. “That’s better.”
The cards are shuffled through again.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
The same rhythm, different tone.
“Anyone got anything interesting?” Adeline asks, tearing her envelope open now.
“Yes,” Elsie says dryly. “Three pages about rationing.”
“Thrilling.”
“I like him.”
“You would.”
“Who’s that from?” someone asks Millie, leaning over.
That’s not how it works here. It leans in, just slightly.
Your eyes find the first lines.
I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.
You don’t react, nor do you finish reading the letter. Not properly.
But, Elsie sees it. Of course she does.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
You fold the letter once.
Carefully.
Too quickly.
“It’s nothing.”
A pause, truly deeper this time.
Then, “Read it again,” Elsie says, not unkindly.
You glance at her.
“I’ve read it.”
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “And yet.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.
“Late evening lipstick,” she adds lightly. “I knew it.”
You don’t understand the reference.
You don’t ask.
Across the room, Millie says something, light, bright enough to catch if you wanted to, followed by a small spill of laughter that lifts and fades just as easily. Elsie answers in her quieter way, something dry, something precise, and it lands the same, softer this time. It drifts.
The room settles back into its small habits, fabric shifting, hands moving, the quiet rhythm of things being folded, set down, picked up again. Familiar motions, half-seen, half-heard.
You register it.
The shape of it. The sound, but it doesn’t quite reach you.
Because the letter rests unfolded in your hands and you’re looking at it, again.
As though the rest of the room has slipped a step behind and this, this single page, has taken its place.
You shift where you sit.
Not fully, just enough that your knee presses into the edge of the bedframe, grounding, though you don’t register the contact until a dull pressure settles there. Your shoulders draw in a fraction, instinctive, protective, like you’ve been caught in something you don’t yet understand.
‘I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.’
A small shift in the ink, like he paused.
‘I suppose that makes this unnecessary.
But I had a quiet moment, which doesnt happen often here, and it felt like a waste not to use it.’
A pause.
‘Have you seen Thorpe Abbotts at sunset?’
Your lips part, just barely, like you’re about to say something, though there’s no one to say it to. The breath that follows is shallow, uneven in a way you don’t quite correct, and it leaves you through your nose instead, quieter than it should be.
‘It’s quieter then. There’s a stretch past the hangars where the light catches the field properly.
Does a better job of it than any light ever could.’
There’s a faint pull between your brows now, not dramatic, not sharp, just a small, persistent tension that refuses to ease. It lingers even when your eyes move on, as though your expression hasn’t quite caught up with your thoughts.
Your thumb drags once along the margin of the page. A slow movement. Absent. You don’t feel the texture of it, only the motion.
You tilt the paper slightly, angling it toward the light without thinking, like clarity might come from seeing it differently. It doesn’t. The last line remains exactly as it is, steady, unchanged, offering nothing more than they already have.
The final words don’t hold anything unclear, that’s not the problem.
Still, something in your chest misplaces itself reading over them.
Your fingers shift their hold, loosening now, though not enough to let the paper fall. You don’t fold it. Don’t move to set it aside.
You just hold it. Still.
And for a moment, longer than you’d care to admit, you don’t think about the room, or the girls, or the sound of anything beyond your own breathing.
Only the letter. The lines at the bottom of the page.
And the quiet, unsteady awareness that you should put it down,
and don’t.
‘If you’re there tomorrow, you’ll find me.
If not, I suppose that answers that.
—J.’
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
i might’ve retagged you guys, but this a cute special one, thank you for your reblogs, comments i see them all! xoxo
With this chapter, any thoughts regarding anything about what you read or what you want to read in the later chapters are so cherished! please let me know!
As life on base at Thorpe Abbotts settles into something familiar, an unexpected encounter with Jeongguk shifts the day, and night out with the girls at a crowded bar, reveals more than you’d intended to notice. Shifts things in ways neither of you quite acknowledge.
pairings: pilot jk x fem! postal-clerk reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O3 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 6.7k
average reading time - 37 minutes
─── [💌] THE ROM-COM CHAPTER IS FINALLY HERE. i hope you guys come to like this just as much as i do, i hope you see the difference from the different chapters to this, hopefully the next chapters going to be soppy romance, i’m trying to cover different vibes each chapter, ch1 = reminiscing, ch2 = slight nostalgia, ch3 = rom-com, ch4 = teeth-rotting romance, coming out 5/6th may 2026. i hope what you take away from this, is that things look different from everyone’s perspective, stop being so harsh on yourself. the only thing that’s gotten me through this is your comments, i hold so much love for your small thoughts! love you angels! back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O3 - COLLISION COURSE
On this particular morning, the room is louder, it’s already awake before you’re fully in it. Not chaotic, just thorough.
“You have three of the same shade.”
“I do not.”
“You do,” Adeline insists, already halfway across the room, holding up two lipsticks like evidence. “This one—“ she lifts one, “—and this one—“ another, “are identical.” The lipstick cases are dramatically drawn up in the air, a fraction past where her widened eyes are.
“They are not identical.”
“They are identical.”
“They are entirely different.”
“They’re both red.”
“One is deeper.”
“They’re both red, Elsie.”
A quiet snort comes from somewhere behind you. “You’re both unbearable, that’s what.” someone mumbles.
Elsie reaches over, plucking one from Adeline’s hand. “This is evening.”
“And the other?”
“Late evening.”
Adeline’s face drops, her hands that are holding the lipsticks, drop from the air.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not a distinction,” Adeline says, turning with both lipsticks raised back up again. “That’s the same mistake twice.”
“It isn’t a mistake.”
“It is when no one can tell the difference.”
“You can’t tell the difference, A.”
“No, no one can tell the difference.”
You don’t mean to smile and you apparently don’t stop it quickly enough.
Adeline catches it immediately.
“Oh, don’t do that.” Her brows start to scrunch, her face slowly following.
“Do what?” you reply, not looking up, though guilty amusement evident in your raised brow.
“That—“ she gestures vaguely toward your face, “—that quiet little agreement. It encourages her.”
“Elsie dear, you’ve organised them by time of day.”
“That’s just what being practical is, Adeline.”
“That’s concerning.”
Another ripple of quiet laughter follows, softer this time. Familiar.
You shift the stack of letters you didn’t finish last night, in your hands, aligning the edges without thinking, thumb pressing slightly along the paper as though it might settle something beyond itself.
“Anyway,” Adeline says, abandoning the lipsticks entirely now, “what’s the plan today? Please don’t say ‘more of the same’, good God, i’ll lose the will to live.”
“It’s more of the same,” Elsie replies.
“I hate that for me.”
Millie finally stands, smoothing her skirt in quick, unnecessary motions. “You always hate it. You just complain differently each time.”
“That’s called variety.”
“No, it’s called repetition.”
Adeline is still looking at Millie but throws her hand up to point at Elsie, “You’re becoming her.”
“I am not.”
“You are—“
“Alright, alright, let’s stop now, it’s too early in the morning for this. Move the topic along.” Elsie voices, an exhausted, humoured sigh leaving her.
Adeline’s ready to rebut what she said, mouth already opening.
“Jeon’s lot came back yesterday.” Elsie blurts.
It slips in like it belongs there. No build-up. No emphasis.
The room doesn’t stop, just slightly tilts.
“Did they?” Millie asks, too quickly to be uninterested.
“Mm,” Elsie hums. “Late.”
“Heard it wasn’t clean.”
“It never is.”
Adeline exhales softly through her nose, not quite a laugh. “That’s reassuring.”
You don’t look up, not straight away. Your fingers move, lift, place. The same rhythm. You try tuning out the conversation, try pushing anything into your mind to take the place that his presence is etching there.
“Which one’s Jeon?” Millie asks, lip pouted, glancing between them.
Adeline tilts her head slightly. “You’d know.”
“Why would I know?”
“You just would.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
You blink once, hard. With your head still down, you try adjusting the edge of the stack again but it doesn’t need adjusting.
“Is he the loud one?” Millie continues.
“There are several loud ones.”
“The worse kind.”
“The only kind.” Adeline corrects, eyebrows arched high, lips pursed in an all-knowing look.
Elsie finally looks up. Briefly. Her gaze flicks past them, then to you. Then away again.
“He’s not the worst of them,” she says.
A pause. Small, but it holds.
“How would you know?” Adeline asks lightly with light confusion fluttering across her face.
Elsie shrugs once. “You hear things.”
“You listen too much, E.”
“Or maybe, you don’t listen enough.”
Millie leans in slightly. “So which one is he?”
Another beat. Another interval for your mind to try compose itself.
Elsie doesn’t answer. Not directly.
“You’ll know,” she says instead.
Adeline smiles at that. Slow. Knowing.
“Oh, that’s irritating,” she mummers, with a light roll of her eyes, picking up her bag before heading toward the door, her now overly smoothed-down nurse uniform sitting just right where she’s adjusted it once too many times.
You keep your eyes on the paper bundle as you stand up, ready to follow Millie’s path to the door. You don’t chirp in. You don’t ask. But something, quietly and inconveniently, has already shifted.
Not enough to name. Not enough to matter.
Just enough that, as you fall into step behind the others, the rhythm you’d settled into, no longer feels entirely your own.
“Bar later?” Millie says from where she’s walking in-front of you, half over her shoulder, half to no one in particular.
Adeline lets out a soft breath that almost passes as a laugh. “If Matron doesn’t decide we’ve all committed some unforgivable offence by just existing.”
“She might,” Elsie adds, now stood up, adjusting the cuff of her sleeve with quiet precision. “She’s been looking for a reason all week.”
“That’s because you gave her one,” Adeline replies.
“I gave her nothing.”
“You reorganised her filing system without asking.”
“It was inefficient.”
“It was not yours.”
A pause.
“Well,” Millie says lightly, reaching for the door, “We’ll go anyway, I want to see each and every one of you there, girls.”
No one agrees. No one refuses. And somehow, that feels like an answer.
Outside, the base spills into motion.
Jeeps rattle past in uneven bursts, tyres biting into loose gravel, a horn sounding once, ignored. Someone jogs across your path with a clipboard clutched too tightly, nearly colliding with a pair of mechanics hauling a crate between them, their sleeves already darkened with oil. Laughter breaks out somewhere to your right, cut short by a sharp call of a name that doesn’t get answered the first time.
A line of pilots crosses ahead, cutting through the flow like they’ve already decided where they’re meant to be before anyone else has caught up to it. One of them walks backwards mid-conversation, gesturing wildly, nearly walking straight into a passing officer who doesn’t even slow.
Further out, a bicycle weaves recklessly between it all, earning a shouted insult and a half-hearted wave in return.
No one stops. Not properly. Everything just moves around everything else.
Millie falls into step beside you without asking, the click-clacks of yours and her low-heeled shoes matching coincidentally.
“You are coming later,” she says, as though the conversation has already been decided.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t.” You take a single look at her by your side, then back to the vast base runway ahead of you.
“You didn’t say you were.”
“That’s not the same thing.” A small laugh from you escapes naturally.
“It is to me.”
You glance at her briefly, again. “That explains a lot.”
A soft smile takes place on your face at her antics.
She nudges your arm lightly with hers as you walk. “You need it.”
“I don’t.”
“You really do.”
“I don’t.” You say firmly, even despite your growing smile.
“You’ve been reading other people’s lives for weeks,” she says. “At some point you have to have one of your own.”
With Millie, it never comes from anywhere complicated. She says what she thinks and leaves it there, light, unexamined.
But your smile doesn’t quite hold. Not because of her, just the shape of it. The idea of it.
Of spending your days sorting through other people’s lives, holding them briefly in your hands, only to set them aside again without ever touching your own.
It isn’t new. It has crossed your mind before, faint enough to ignore, easy enough to place beneath something else. But hearing it said, out loud, simple as that, it doesn’t pass the same way. It stays. Just slightly longer than it ever has before.
You don’t answer to what she says, caught up in yourself.
The path widens slightly as you move further across the base, splitting into smaller directions, people crossing through them without hesitation, each step already decided before it’s taken.
Ahead, a group gathers.
You don’t mean to look, but you do.
Pilots.
Easy to tell. Not just the uniforms, but by the way they carry themselves. Looser. Louder. Like the rules don’t sit quite as tightly on them.
And then, him.
Not set apart. Not standing ahead.
Just, in the middle.
One of them is saying something, animated, hands moving as he talks, the others reacting in bursts of ‘Cart this’, ‘Evans that’, laughter, interruptions, the kind of overlapping noise that doesn’t wait its turn.
Jeongguk leans slightly into it, head tipped just enough, a grin that comes easy, unconfined.
It’s different from the train.
This version of him doesn’t hold back.
You look away first.
“You see?” Millie says quietly beside you, her head tilting towards your shoulder, not bothering to hide it. “I told you.”
“Well, I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.”
You keep walking, eyes steady ahead of you, even if hers aren’t.
After precisely four steps, “Which one?” she presses.
You don’t answer.
“Fine,” she says lightly, a small shrug taking place in the corner of your eyes. “Keep your secrets.”
You reach the point where the path splits. Her direction. Yours.
“I’ll come find you later,” she says, already half-turning.
“You don’t know where I’ll be.”
“I’ll manage.”
A small pause.
“Try not to disappear,” she adds walking backwards and half-shouting from her distance.
“I won’t.” You reply with the same half-shout.
You’ve both turned away from each-other at this point, when she murmurs a short, “You will.” to herself with a delicate smile, something you don’t quite catch.
You continue forward, reach the corridor to your office, then stop.
A thought. Small. Immediate.
You pull your bag up by its straps, from where it’s hanging lower.
You check your bag. Once. Nothing.
“…Right,” you whisper under your breath.
You turn back.
The corridor is narrower than it needs to be, or perhaps it only feels that way when people insist on moving through it all at once.
You’re halfway through it, a stack of files balanced more carefully than you’d like to admit, attention split between the names on the top sheet and the sound of someone calling after you from somewhere behind.
You’re not paying enough attention. That’s the first mistake. The second, turning the corner too quickly.
You turn the corner—
and collide.
Not hard. Just enough.
Your shoulder catches a chest, the papers slip before you can stop them, edges catching against one another before scattering cleanly to the floor.
A beat.
Silence, brief and misplaced.
Then—
“Well,” a voice says, even, almost thoughtful. “That seems inefficient.”
You blink once, looking down at the mess at your feet before lifting your gaze.
He’s already looking at you.
Of course he is.
There’s no hesitation in him, no flicker of apology waiting to land. Just that same steady, unreadable ease, as though the moment has arranged itself around him rather than the other way around.
“You walked into me,” you say, crouching to gather the papers, tone level but not entirely unbothered.
“I don’t think that’s accurate.”
You let out a quiet breath through your nose, stacking what you can without looking at him properly.
“No?”
“No,” he says, just as simply. “You were in the way.”
That earns it, a glance.
Not sharp, not surprised. Just enough to meet Jeongguks eyes this time.
“And you,” you reply, smoothing one of the creased edges with your thumb, “were apparently aiming.”
The corner of his mouth shifts, not quite a smile, but close enough to recognise the shape of one.
“My bad, darling.”
A pause settles, not awkward, just there how it would be, in the midst of a busy corridor.
You reach for the last sheet at the same moment he does. His hand stills, just slightly, before pulling back, letting you take it.
It’s small. Almost nothing.
You straighten, papers gathered once more, adjusting them into something that resembles order.
He watches you do it.
Not in a way that feels invasive, not quite curious either. Just, present.
“You’re—“ he starts.
“Careful.” you cut in lightly, not looking up as you align the corners.
“—on the wrong base this time?” an easy furrow finds itself between his brows, not deep enough to be concern, just habit, like his face knows how to react before he decides to.
You glance at him then, properly this time, one brow lifting just slightly.
And there it is again, that same looseness about him. Not careless, not quite. Just, unbothered in a way that doesn’t feel accidental.
His jacket sits slightly open at the collar, like he’d fixed it once and decided that was enough. Sleeves worn just enough to suggest use, not care. There’s something easy in the way he stands, weight settled like he’s exactly where he expects to be, like the space adjusts around him rather than the other way round.
“You remember that, Lieutenant?”
“Mm,” he hums, shifting his weight just slightly, “Hard to forget someone so committed to poor decisions.”
There it is, that look.
Not quite a grin, not quite restrained either. Something that lingers at the corner of his mouth like it might tip either way depending on how far you let it go.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“For you?” he asks.
“For both of us, I imagine.”
That does it. A real smile this time, brief but it lands properly. It softens something in his face, takes the edge off the smugness without removing it entirely.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought you handled the last mistake quite well.”
“The wrong train?” you say.
“Wrong train,” he affirmatively repeats.
A beat.
You hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary and this time, you notice more. The faint mark near his lips. The way his eyes don’t quite stay still when listening, like he’s always tracking something just beyond what’s being said.
Something displaces, quiet but there.
And for a fleeting second, he notices it too. The pause. The way you don’t look away immediately. It catches somewhere, not enough to name but enough to register.
Theres movement around you again, people passing, voices cutting through the space, but it feels slightly removed for a moment, like the noise belongs somewhere just behind the two of you.
“Well,” he adds, a slight tilt of his head, “you’re making a habit of this.”
You glance down briefly at the papers in your hands, then back at him. “Except, it’s you that seems to be in the way more often than I’d expect.”
“Where’s the fun in not being in your way?”
You almost smile.
“I mean, you’ve made quite the impression.” he continues, easy now, a small nod towards you.
You tilt your head a fraction. “By getting on the wrong train?” your teeth catch your bottom lip in feigned confusion.
“It’s a strong opening.”
A small humoured breath leaves you, almost a laugh but not entirely.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Please do.”
Just as a pause is about to settle, “So,” he says, like the thought has only just occurred to him, “you’ve found your way around Thorpe Abbotts then, i’m guessing.”
You glance past him briefly, towards the stretch of base behind.
“Something like that.”
“Office work?”
You look back at him, the corner of your mouth lifting in astonishment, “You remember much more than you let on.”
He huffs a quiet breath, something almost amused. “I remember what’s useful.”
“And was I, Lieutenant?”
That earns something sharper, more deliberate. His gaze settles properly now.
“Jeongguk,” he corrects, easy, like it’s nothing.
You glance at the name on his uniform, again. You already knew.
“Right,” you say. A beat. “I’ll try not to forget this time.”
There’s the faintest flicker of something in his expression at that, interest maybe, possibly something else entirely.
“I’d be disappointed if you did.”
Before you can answer, a voice cuts from down the corridor—
“Jeon!”
He doesn’t look away from you immediately, just lifts a hand slightly in acknowledgment.
“Hold that thought,” he says, though it doesn’t feel like a request.
“I wrot—“ just as he’s about to begin saying the next thing, another voice, closer now—
“Jeongguk, move, we’re needed—“
He exhales lightly, something between a sigh and a laugh.
“Duty calls.”
“So I’ve heard.”
A brief pause. His eyes scanning your face in a once-over. Then, “I suppose I’ll see you around,”
Again, it doesn’t seem like a question. You shift the papers once in your hands, steadying them.
“You might.”
That almost-smile again.
“Try not to get lost.”
You meet it, just enough.
“No promises, Jeongguk”
Another second, just one, where something more could be said.
Then, he steps back, turning as the others close in around him, conversation picking up where it must have left off before you existed in it.
And just like that, he’s folded back into motion, Into noise. Into everything else.
You stand there a moment longer than you should.
Then someone brushes past your shoulder, muttering an apology you don't quite catch, and the corridor returns all at once. You adjust the papers again, even though they're already straight and continue on, in the opposite direction to him.
As if nothing has happened.
As if something hasn't.
Unbeknownst to you, Jeongguk takes a look over his shoulders, exactly when he knows you’ve walked away, and for a moment, he just watches you go, his head tilted the whole time, like he’s trying to place something that doesn’t quite sit where it should.
Then, a quiet breath through his nose. “…Right.”
After a moment, Jeongguk falls a step or two in front of them. He doesn’t get far.
“Oi—Romeo!”
He doesn’t stop. That’s his first mistake.
“What was that?” Taehyung calls, already grinning, falling into step beside him. “You actually having a conversation?”
“Didn’t think he knew how,” Carter adds from behind.
Jeongguk exhales lightly through his nose, not slowing his pace. “I do when it’s worth it.”
That lands.
“Oho—“ Taehyung lets out, looking over his shoulder toward the rest of the boys behind him, whilst nudging Jeongguk. “Hear that?”
“Careful,” Mills cuts in, “he might start writing letters next.”
A small ripple of laughter breaks out.
Jeongguk shakes his head once, slightly at that, but there’s something there now, something just off his usual rhythm.
Taehyung catches it. Of course he does.
“…You’ve either wrote one or you’re thinking about it,” he says, quieter this time, intentionally between just them.
Jeongguk doesn’t answer.
Which is answer enough.
Taehyung grins, wider now. “God help us.”
————
The hours that follow make the office quieter than it should be, as if for every minute that passes, time takes ten-fold of it. Or maybe you brought that quiet in with you.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor as you pull yourself closer to the desk over time, papers waiting where you’d left them in the morning, untouched, unchanged.
When you notice the light that’s still peaking through the window, falling differently on the paper you’re working on, you sit up. For the first time in hours, you look up, drawn not by thought but by instinct, toward the dusty ledge of the window. And for a moment, you don’t move.
Then it passes.
There are only a few letters left.
So you lower your eyes again, just as quickly as you’d lost it, fingers finding their rhythm once more as if nothing had interrupted them at all.
Lift. Read. Redact. Sort. Place.
It comes back easily. Too easily. Ink to ink. Names to names. Lives reduced to something that can be folded, stamped and sent away.
Until, you stop.
Not because of the name. Never because of the name. Because of the way it’s written.
‘My darling,’
Your eyes move, steady at first.
‘I hope this reaches you before anything else does.’
A small crease takes place between your brows.
You’ve read this before, not these words, but this shape of them. Careful. Controlled. Missing something.
Your thumb presses lightly into the edge of the paper as you continue.
‘I have been told to keep this brief, so I will try, though you know I’ve never been very good at that.’
There’s that carefulness again, that tip-toeing around what matters.
‘Time is passing strangely here. Days feel like hours until they don’t, and then it seems weeks have gone without me noticing at all.’
Your fingers are digging into your palm now, nails carving half-moons into the skin.
‘I keep thinking of the last morning before I left, how you stood in the doorway with your hair still undone, saying something I didn’t quite catch because I was already halfway out. I’ve been trying to remember it properly, but it won’t come back the way it should.’
Your brows furrow deeper.
‘I think I assumed there would be time to ask you again.’
Your lip twitches as you try to swallow. Not noticeably, just enough.
Your eyes continue.
‘They tell us not to write much about where we are or what we’re doing. I suppose that makes sense. There are things here I wouldn’t know how to explain even if I could.’
A line break, shorter now.
‘If you don’t hear from me again, I don’t want you to think it was because I didn’t try.’
Your hand falls still, nails lift from their etched dips in your palm.
‘It only means—‘
The sentence ends there.
Not finished. Not crossed out. Just, left.
Your eyes linger on it longer than it should.
Then drops, almost reluctantly, to the final line squeezed beneath, scrawled smaller, as if added after everything else had already been decided.
‘I should have stayed a moment longer.’
Silence. Pure unfiltered silence, not in the room. In you.
Instinctively, your body mulls over with trembling softness as you move the tops of your fingers to rest at the edge of the paper once again.
Then, as careful as your body allows, you turn the page over.
Nothing.
So, your fingers naturally trace the indent that the words on the front have left, hollowed out on the back. Feeling the indentation of the words rather than reading them now.
You don’t reach for the next letter.
You sit with this one.
And you don’t know how long you sit there for, until—
a knock.
You don’t look up immediately. But another knock lands on the doorframe straight-away, lighter this time.
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken root in there,” Millie’s voice carries through, already half-amused.
You look back down at the paper in your hands, then at the small stack beside you, then at nothing in particular.
“This looks promising,” she says, stepping in without waiting. “Come on.”
You look at up at her from where she’s stood, leaning against the open doorframe. Then back at the stack.
“I still have—“
“You will always still have,” she cuts in. “That’s the problem.”
A beat.
You don’t argue. Instead, you gather what’s left into something resembling order, aligning the edges once, twice, before leaving them where they are. The only paper you set aside is the one you read last, you move it, not atop the pile, just besides it.
“Good,” Millie says, satisfied, already turning back toward the door. “I refuse to let you spend another evening reading about other people’s tragedies.”
You pause only a second longer, eyes flicking once to the letter you set aside, then you finally stand.
And follow.
───
By the time you reach the bunks, you’ve already worn yourself thin trying to convince Millie you’re tired. Tired enough to be left alone, at least for tonight.
It doesn’t take.
“You’re coming,” she says, already halfway through changing, blouse pulled over her head with little regard for the argument.
“Millie, it’s just tonight—”
“No,” she cuts in, voice muffled briefly before reappearing, sharper now. “Not tonight. No chance.”
And so, you’re here.
The bar is louder than it has any right to be.
Not polished, not orderly, just thoroughly alive. Chairs scraping, boots knocking into table legs, voices overlapping without waiting their turn. Someone laughs too loudly near the back, another voice rising over it in mock argument. Glass meets wood in uneven rhythm. The kind of noise that doesn’t demand attention, only fills the space so nothing else has to.
It feels like something just short of reckless.
“You’re late,” Adeline says immediately, though she’s smiling when she does.
“I wasn’t coming.”
“And yet,” Elsie adds, not looking up, her fingers slow around the base of her glass, turning it in small, absent circles, “here you are.”
The bench is slightly sticky beneath your palms when you steady yourself, dress swaying, the table uneven enough that your glass tilts before it settles. Elsie presses a drink into your hand before you can refuse it, her movements efficient, practised.
You let it happen.
Three drinks in, the noise has shifted from something you’re aware of, to something that presses at the edges of everything.
Not overwhelming. Just inescapable.
From across the room, it’s worse.
“What are we doing, gentlemen— what is this?” Taehyung’s tipsy voice cuts through the noise, one hand thrown out toward the table like he’s presenting a spectacle that’s far grander than it is.
“It’s called entertainment, Tex,” Carter shoots back, not looking up from where he’s lining up a dart with far too much concentration.
“It’s called missing, Cart,” Mills adds, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve been ‘lining that up’ for the last five minutes.”
“I’m calculating.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Same thing.”
A small burst of laughter follows.
Then, Jeongguk pushes forward through them.
“Move,” he says, not forceful, just loud enough to be obeyed.
“Here he is,” Evan mutters. “Good God.”
“Gentlemen,” Jeongguk announces, dragging a hand through his hair, already half-smiling like he knows exactly how this ends, “you’re embarrassing yourselves.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Taehyung says, stepping aside just enough.
You don’t realise you’ve gone still until Adeline’s elbow brushes yours.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she murmurs.
“Do what?”
“That,” she says, glancing past you. “Whatever that is.”
You try looking away, to the girls, to your drink, you truly do. But the room doesn’t quite let you.
Jeongguk grabs an apple off the table.
Turns it once in his hand.
Then, with zero hesitation,
“Whoo!”
It’s loud. Sharp. Completely unnecessary.
The room reacts anyway.
“Sit down—sit down, you idiot—” Cart starts. Too late.
Jeongguk’s already stepping back, planting himself against the wall, tossing the apple once before setting it in place, on-top of his head.
“You miss Cart,” he says, pointing lazily at Carter with two fingers, “I’ll make sure you’re at the back of any formation for the next two months.”
Jeongguks hand is large enough to cover his whole face when it comes up. The only movement being where he separates his pointer finger and middle finger, a make-shift peephole for his eyes.
“Jeon—” Taehyung starts, laughing now, already knowing this is going badly.
“Relax, Tex,” Jeongguk cuts in, easy, cocky. “You worry too much.”
“Take the shot!” someone shouts from behind.
Carter exhales sharply. Throws the dart.
Your fingers twitch once around your glass.
Thunk.
The apple splits. Half of it drops. The other barely shifts.
The table erupts.
Jeongguk pushes himself off the wall, looking down at the apple like it personally offended him.
He’s there, yes, in the familiar yellow sheepskin jacket, but it’s not like before.
He isn’t contained in a moment or a conversation. Not something you can place neatly into memory. He’s louder. Looser. Surrounded.
He steps forward like he belongs there and the room shifts to accommodate him. Sharp. Unrestrained.
Mumbles of the conversation hit your ears in paused moments.
You catch the “Bit off,” you catch the laughter. Easy and effortless—
“Bit off?” Mills repeats. “You’re still alive.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that’s off.” Taehyung adds on, laughing.
“Alright, who’s next?” Evans calls.
“Not him,” Taehyung says immediately. “He’s had enough.”
“I’ve had exactly enough,” Jeongguk corrects, already reaching for someone’s drink that isn’t his.
“That’s not yours—”
“Mhm.” he hums as best he can with his head tipped back.
It doesn’t match anything you’ve seen of him before. Not the train. Not the corridor. This is different.
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath after the drink, something close to a laugh, rubbing briefly at the back of his neck as the moment dissolves into something else, another story, another voice, another shift in the room.
It moves quickly. It always does.
Because you’re still watching, you also catch the girl approaching him.
Someone steps into his space and he lets them.
A girl, familiar enough in the way most faces here become. She’s smiling before she speaks, already leaning in like she expects to be let closer.
“You’re insane.” She blinks up at him, not over-dramatically, just with quiet intention, certain.
“I’ve heard worse.”
“You could’ve been hurt.”
He glances at her then.
Not dismissive. Not interested.
Just enough to answer.
“I wasn’t.”
She stays anyway. They usually do.
It doesn’t require much from him, just the right responses, spaced out enough to pass as attention. A nod here. A word there. Nothing that asks him to give more than he intends to.
Her hand brushes his sleeve.
From where you stand, it looks like he leans down to hear her better.
You look away, too quickly, then back.
He shifts, barely noticeable. Not pulling away. Just not staying where she expects him to be.
The conversation carries on around them, changing shape without asking permission.
Your hands grip glass so tight, the condensation trickles up and over the path of your fingers, as if reluctant to break up the moment.
From the opposite side of the room, it also looks like something.
But, Taehyung notices first. Of course he does.
He watches the interaction for exactly two seconds before muttering to Mills, “He’s not even listening.”
Mills glances over.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Back with Jeongguk, the girl’s still talking. Still trying. Still leaning in.
He nods once.
Another half-second too late.
“Right,” he says.
Wrong response. Doesn’t matter.
Her hand lingers, but he shifts. Not obvious. Just enough.
Taehyung smirks.
“There it is.”
“Jeon!” Cart calls out again. “You flirtin’ or surviving over there?”
Jeongguk doesn’t look at him.
“Multitasking.”
“Poorly!”
“Better than you throw.” Jeongguk says, a mumble more to himself and the boys closest in distance to him.
But the room reacts again, laughter, shouting, noise folding over itself.
“Come on,” Millie says, tugging lightly at your sleeve. “If you’re going to pretend you’re not interested, at least do it closer.”
“I’m not—“ you begin.
But you let her pull you a few steps further in.
And somewhere in it, he looks up.
And then, something catches in his eyes. Not a sound. Not a name.
Just, movement. He looks up. Not necessarily searching, neither expecting to find anything.
And there you are.
Across the room.
It throws something off, only slightly.
“—Jeon?” He looks down. The girl, still there, still talking.
He hadn’t caught a word.
“You look busy.”
A beat.
“Something like that.”
“You want a drink?” she offers after momentary silence.
He looks past her again
It takes a second. Not to recognise you, but to place you here.
In this.
In the noise, the light, the movement.
Not in a train compartment or a corridor halfway between somewhere and somewhere else.
Not in memory.
Everything else stays loud. But that moment caught by Jeongguk, doesn’t.
“…Maybe later,” he says.
It’s not a yes. She takes it like one anyway, but he’s already half-turned.
───
In a sense, you see it before it happens. The shift, the ease of it.
She steps in close. Too close.
‘You’re insane.’
You look away, your finger twitching at the thought, mind lagging behind your body.
It looks easy, that’s the worst part.
Like it requires nothing from him, like it happens often.
Adeline watches you now instead of him.
“Oh, this is excellent,” she mutters.
“Don’t.” Elsie nudges her.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
He nods at something the girl says. Late. Slightly off.
You notice. You don’t know why you notice.
Her hand rests against his arm. He shifts. Barely.
Your gaze lingers a second longer.
“…he’s not even listening,” someone says near him.
You don’t hear who. You don’t need to.
You look down at your drink, at the pleats in your dress, at anything.
Then, back up.
And this time, he’s looking at you.
Not by accident.
The noise doesn’t stop. Nothing changes.
But the moment, holds.
No smile. No gesture.
Just, recognition. Again.
Then, someone pulls him away “Jeon, you’re up again—“
The moment breaks. Just like that. The room rushes back in.
He doesn't look for you again. Doesn't need to. He already knows where you are. And somehow, that's worse, for him or for you, you don’t know.
You don’t realise, not at first, that you’re still looking at the space he left behind. As if something of him is still there. As if looking long enough would profess him again, a minute longer than these fleeting moments. This time with that same loose version of him from tonight.
Adeline leans in immediately.
“Careful,” Adeline murmurs from behind your shoulder, as she joins you appearing from nowhere. “They’re contagious.”
You don’t look at her.
“Who?”
She tilts her chin slightly, you don’t follow it.
“Pilots,” she says.
Millie laughs. “Too late for that.”
“Stop, A.” you say, shaking your head faintly, though there’s no real weight behind it.
“Jeon’s worst than most,” Adeline adds, almost thoughtfully.
That, you don’t react to.
“Is he?” Millie asks, far too interested.
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “The kind that knows it.”
Noise swells back in, quick to cover what just was. The night carries on, and by the time you leave, the cooler and quieter air feels unfamiliar.
The door swings shut behind you, cutting the noise in half, though it still spills faintly into the night, laughter trailing after you like something unfinished.
“It’s freezing,” Elsie mutters, teeth already grinding, she pulls her coat tighter around herself.
“It’s refreshing,” Millie corrects.
“It’s cold,” Elsie repeats.
Adeline says nothing at first. She just looks at you.
You feel it brush over you.
“What?” you ask, adjusting your sleeve, though there’s nothing wrong with it.
“Nothing,” she says.
A beat.
“Absolutely nothing.”
Millie snorts. “That’s worse.”
You glance between them. “I don’t know what you think you’ve seen—”
“Oh, we haven’t seen anything,” Adeline cuts in lightly.
Elsie hums. “Not a thing.”
Millie nods, far too eager. “No, no. Completely uneventful evening.”
You let out a small breath, something between a laugh and disbelief.
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” Adeline says, stepping down off the curb, “you came out anyway.”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“Mm,” Elsie cuts in, a quiet sound, but pointed.
You stop walking for half a second.
Just enough for them to notice.
“Oh, this is excellent,” Millie murmurs, looping her arm through yours before you can move ahead of them. “She’s thinking about it.”
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
“Dangerous,” Adeline says.
“For who?” you shoot back.
All three of them exchange a look.
“For you,” Elsie says simply.
You scoff softly, though it doesn’t quite land.
“That’s dramatic.”
“Is it?” Adeline tilts her head slightly. “Because from where I was standing—”
“Please, you were standing too far away to make any kind of observation, A.”
“I was standing exactly where I needed to be.”
Millie laughs under her breath. “You didn’t even blink,” she adds.
At that, you falter.
“I’m sorry, what?” you say, nose and eyebrows scrunched in slight confusion.
“Not once,” Elsie says.
“That’s not even possible.”
“It is when you’re staring,” Adeline replies.
“I wasn’t staring.”
They all look at you again.
You sigh.
“Even if I was,” you say, a touch sharper now, “Is there a problem?”
“Of course not,” Millie agrees immediately.
Too quickly.
“Nothing ever is a problem,” Elsie adds.
Adeline smiles, slow and knowing.
“Especially not Lieutenants who put apples on their heads in crowded bars.”
That, you don’t respond to, finding no worth in debating the notion.
You just keep walking.
They let you. For a few steps.
Then—
“So,” Millie says, lighter now, like she’s moved on, but if you look close enough at the twitch in her chin, you’ll find she hasn’t moved on. “are we going back tomorrow?”
You glance at her.
“No.”
A beat.
“…probably not.” you add, eyes downcast.
Three quiet smiles pass between them.
You don’t see them.
Instead, you focus on the last few steps toward the building, closing the distance with quiet intent, like it might settle something if you just keep moving.
Inside, heels tap against the floorboards, coats are shrugged off, the room reshapes itself around your return with practiced ease. It doesn’t take long for all of you to fall back into routine.
Millie’s already tossing her scarf somewhere it won’t stay. Elsie bends at the edge of her bed, slipping off her shoes with a quiet exhale. Adeline crosses to the window, pushing it shut with a firm hand like it had any business being open at all.
Then, “Oh, girls. Post.”
It isn’t announced like it matters. It always is. The room shifts anyways. Not dramatically, just an unmarked awareness.
Adeline is already halfway across the room before the rest of you properly look up.
“Oh, don’t pretend you weren’t waiting,” she says, reaching for the small stack before it’s fully handed over.
“I wasn’t,” Elsie replies, not moving from her bed.
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were reorganising your things.”
“I like things organised.”
“You only like things organised when you’re avoiding something.”
A quiet laugh moves through the room.
“Go on then,” someone says from behind you. “Let’s have it.”
Adeline flips through the envelopes like she’s dealing cards.
“Alright, let’s see who’s loved today.”
“Adeline—”
“Obviously.”
“That was quick.”
“I’m efficient.”
She doesn’t open it immediately, just holds it and smiles at it with a new-found fondness.
“From who?” Elsie asks, finally looking up.
Adeline tilts the envelope slightly, as if considering whether to answer.
“Oh, thank God,” Millie says immediately, snatching it from the pile. “If I’d gone another day without hearing from him, I might’ve had to develop a personality.”
“You should try that anyway,” someone mutters.
Millie ignores it, already opening her letter, scanning it too quickly to be taking anything in.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
“He’s alive.”
“Romantic.”
“That’s enough.”
A pause.
Then, “He says he misses me.”
Adeline softens, just slightly. “That’s better.”
The cards are shuffled through again.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
The same rhythm, different tone.
“Anyone got anything interesting?” Adeline asks, tearing her envelope open now.
“Yes,” Elsie says dryly. “Three pages about rationing.”
“Thrilling.”
“I like him.”
“You would.”
“Who’s that from?” someone asks Millie, leaning over.
That’s not how it works here. It leans in, just slightly.
Your eyes find the first lines.
I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.
You don’t react, nor do you finish reading the letter. Not properly.
But, Elsie sees it. Of course she does.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
You fold the letter once.
Carefully.
Too quickly.
“It’s nothing.”
A pause, truly deeper this time.
Then, “Read it again,” Elsie says, not unkindly.
You glance at her.
“I’ve read it.”
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “And yet.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.
“Late evening lipstick,” she adds lightly. “I knew it.”
You don’t understand the reference.
You don’t ask.
Across the room, Millie says something, light, bright enough to catch if you wanted to, followed by a small spill of laughter that lifts and fades just as easily. Elsie answers in her quieter way, something dry, something precise, and it lands the same, softer this time. It drifts.
The room settles back into its small habits, fabric shifting, hands moving, the quiet rhythm of things being folded, set down, picked up again. Familiar motions, half-seen, half-heard.
You register it.
The shape of it. The sound, but it doesn’t quite reach you.
Because the letter rests unfolded in your hands and you’re looking at it, again.
As though the rest of the room has slipped a step behind and this, this single page, has taken its place.
You shift where you sit.
Not fully, just enough that your knee presses into the edge of the bedframe, grounding, though you don’t register the contact until a dull pressure settles there. Your shoulders draw in a fraction, instinctive, protective, like you’ve been caught in something you don’t yet understand.
‘I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.’
A small shift in the ink, like he paused.
‘I suppose that makes this unnecessary.
But I had a quiet moment, which doesnt happen often here, and it felt like a waste not to use it.’
A pause.
‘Have you seen Thorpe Abbotts at sunset?’
Your lips part, just barely, like you’re about to say something, though there’s no one to say it to. The breath that follows is shallow, uneven in a way you don’t quite correct, and it leaves you through your nose instead, quieter than it should be.
‘It’s quieter then. There’s a stretch past the hangars where the light catches the field properly.
Does a better job of it than any light ever could.’
There’s a faint pull between your brows now, not dramatic, not sharp, just a small, persistent tension that refuses to ease. It lingers even when your eyes move on, as though your expression hasn’t quite caught up with your thoughts.
Your thumb drags once along the margin of the page. A slow movement. Absent. You don’t feel the texture of it, only the motion.
You tilt the paper slightly, angling it toward the light without thinking, like clarity might come from seeing it differently. It doesn’t. The last line remains exactly as it is, steady, unchanged, offering nothing more than they already have.
The final words don’t hold anything unclear, that’s not the problem.
Still, something in your chest misplaces itself reading over them.
Your fingers shift their hold, loosening now, though not enough to let the paper fall. You don’t fold it. Don’t move to set it aside.
You just hold it. Still.
And for a moment, longer than you’d care to admit, you don’t think about the room, or the girls, or the sound of anything beyond your own breathing.
Only the letter. The lines at the bottom of the page.
And the quiet, unsteady awareness that you should put it down,
and don’t.
‘If you’re there tomorrow, you’ll find me.
If not, I suppose that answers that.
—J.’
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
With this chapter, any thoughts regarding anything about what you read or what you want to read in the later chapters are so cherished! please let me know!
i'm so sorry for tagging you guys, i just tagged the first likers and rebloggers of the post to be in the taglist, i really really hope you guys don't mind, ill only use your names for this first taglist, after this chapter i won't, it's only purely because not many people commented, again sorry and thank you so much angels!
As life on base at Thorpe Abbotts settles into something familiar, an unexpected encounter with Jeongguk shifts the day, and night out with the girls at a crowded bar, reveals more than you’d intended to notice. Shifts things in ways neither of you quite acknowledge.
pairings: pilot jk x fem! postal-clerk reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O3 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 6.7k
average reading time - 37 minutes
─── [💌] THE ROM-COM CHAPTER IS FINALLY HERE. i hope you guys come to like this just as much as i do, i hope you see the difference from the different chapters to this, hopefully the next chapters going to be soppy romance, i’m trying to cover different vibes each chapter, ch1 = reminiscing, ch2 = slight nostalgia, ch3 = rom-com, ch4 = teeth-rotting romance, coming out 5/6th may 2026. i hope what you take away from this, is that things look different from everyone’s perspective, stop being so harsh on yourself. the only thing that’s gotten me through this is your comments, i hold so much love for your small thoughts! love you angels! back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O3 - COLLISION COURSE
On this particular morning, the room is louder, it’s already awake before you’re fully in it. Not chaotic, just thorough.
“You have three of the same shade.”
“I do not.”
“You do,” Adeline insists, already halfway across the room, holding up two lipsticks like evidence. “This one—“ she lifts one, “—and this one—“ another, “are identical.” The lipstick cases are dramatically drawn up in the air, a fraction past where her widened eyes are.
“They are not identical.”
“They are identical.”
“They are entirely different.”
“They’re both red.”
“One is deeper.”
“They’re both red, Elsie.”
A quiet snort comes from somewhere behind you. “You’re both unbearable, that’s what.” someone mumbles.
Elsie reaches over, plucking one from Adeline’s hand. “This is evening.”
“And the other?”
“Late evening.”
Adeline’s face drops, her hands that are holding the lipsticks, drop from the air.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not a distinction,” Adeline says, turning with both lipsticks raised back up again. “That’s the same mistake twice.”
“It isn’t a mistake.”
“It is when no one can tell the difference.”
“You can’t tell the difference, A.”
“No, no one can tell the difference.”
You don’t mean to smile and you apparently don’t stop it quickly enough.
Adeline catches it immediately.
“Oh, don’t do that.” Her brows start to scrunch, her face slowly following.
“Do what?” you reply, not looking up, though guilty amusement evident in your raised brow.
“That—“ she gestures vaguely toward your face, “—that quiet little agreement. It encourages her.”
“Elsie dear, you’ve organised them by time of day.”
“That’s just what being practical is, Adeline.”
“That’s concerning.”
Another ripple of quiet laughter follows, softer this time. Familiar.
You shift the stack of letters you didn’t finish last night, in your hands, aligning the edges without thinking, thumb pressing slightly along the paper as though it might settle something beyond itself.
“Anyway,” Adeline says, abandoning the lipsticks entirely now, “what’s the plan today? Please don’t say ‘more of the same’, good God, i’ll lose the will to live.”
“It’s more of the same,” Elsie replies.
“I hate that for me.”
Millie finally stands, smoothing her skirt in quick, unnecessary motions. “You always hate it. You just complain differently each time.”
“That’s called variety.”
“No, it’s called repetition.”
Adeline is still looking at Millie but throws her hand up to point at Elsie, “You’re becoming her.”
“I am not.”
“You are—“
“Alright, alright, let’s stop now, it’s too early in the morning for this. Move the topic along.” Elsie voices, an exhausted, humoured sigh leaving her.
Adeline’s ready to rebut what she said, mouth already opening.
“Jeon’s lot came back yesterday.” Elsie blurts.
It slips in like it belongs there. No build-up. No emphasis.
The room doesn’t stop, just slightly tilts.
“Did they?” Millie asks, too quickly to be uninterested.
“Mm,” Elsie hums. “Late.”
“Heard it wasn’t clean.”
“It never is.”
Adeline exhales softly through her nose, not quite a laugh. “That’s reassuring.”
You don’t look up, not straight away. Your fingers move, lift, place. The same rhythm. You try tuning out the conversation, try pushing anything into your mind to take the place that his presence is etching there.
“Which one’s Jeon?” Millie asks, lip pouted, glancing between them.
Adeline tilts her head slightly. “You’d know.”
“Why would I know?”
“You just would.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
You blink once, hard. With your head still down, you try adjusting the edge of the stack again but it doesn’t need adjusting.
“Is he the loud one?” Millie continues.
“There are several loud ones.”
“The worse kind.”
“The only kind.” Adeline corrects, eyebrows arched high, lips pursed in an all-knowing look.
Elsie finally looks up. Briefly. Her gaze flicks past them, then to you. Then away again.
“He’s not the worst of them,” she says.
A pause. Small, but it holds.
“How would you know?” Adeline asks lightly with light confusion fluttering across her face.
Elsie shrugs once. “You hear things.”
“You listen too much, E.”
“Or maybe, you don’t listen enough.”
Millie leans in slightly. “So which one is he?”
Another beat. Another interval for your mind to try compose itself.
Elsie doesn’t answer. Not directly.
“You’ll know,” she says instead.
Adeline smiles at that. Slow. Knowing.
“Oh, that’s irritating,” she mummers, with a light roll of her eyes, picking up her bag before heading toward the door, her now overly smoothed-down nurse uniform sitting just right where she’s adjusted it once too many times.
You keep your eyes on the paper bundle as you stand up, ready to follow Millie’s path to the door. You don’t chirp in. You don’t ask. But something, quietly and inconveniently, has already shifted.
Not enough to name. Not enough to matter.
Just enough that, as you fall into step behind the others, the rhythm you’d settled into, no longer feels entirely your own.
“Bar later?” Millie says from where she’s walking in-front of you, half over her shoulder, half to no one in particular.
Adeline lets out a soft breath that almost passes as a laugh. “If Matron doesn’t decide we’ve all committed some unforgivable offence by just existing.”
“She might,” Elsie adds, now stood up, adjusting the cuff of her sleeve with quiet precision. “She’s been looking for a reason all week.”
“That’s because you gave her one,” Adeline replies.
“I gave her nothing.”
“You reorganised her filing system without asking.”
“It was inefficient.”
“It was not yours.”
A pause.
“Well,” Millie says lightly, reaching for the door, “We’ll go anyway, I want to see each and every one of you there, girls.”
No one agrees. No one refuses. And somehow, that feels like an answer.
Outside, the base spills into motion.
Jeeps rattle past in uneven bursts, tyres biting into loose gravel, a horn sounding once, ignored. Someone jogs across your path with a clipboard clutched too tightly, nearly colliding with a pair of mechanics hauling a crate between them, their sleeves already darkened with oil. Laughter breaks out somewhere to your right, cut short by a sharp call of a name that doesn’t get answered the first time.
A line of pilots crosses ahead, cutting through the flow like they’ve already decided where they’re meant to be before anyone else has caught up to it. One of them walks backwards mid-conversation, gesturing wildly, nearly walking straight into a passing officer who doesn’t even slow.
Further out, a bicycle weaves recklessly between it all, earning a shouted insult and a half-hearted wave in return.
No one stops. Not properly. Everything just moves around everything else.
Millie falls into step beside you without asking, the click-clacks of yours and her low-heeled shoes matching coincidentally.
“You are coming later,” she says, as though the conversation has already been decided.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t.” You take a single look at her by your side, then back to the vast base runway ahead of you.
“You didn’t say you were.”
“That’s not the same thing.” A small laugh from you escapes naturally.
“It is to me.”
You glance at her briefly, again. “That explains a lot.”
A soft smile takes place on your face at her antics.
She nudges your arm lightly with hers as you walk. “You need it.”
“I don’t.”
“You really do.”
“I don’t.” You say firmly, even despite your growing smile.
“You’ve been reading other people’s lives for weeks,” she says. “At some point you have to have one of your own.”
With Millie, it never comes from anywhere complicated. She says what she thinks and leaves it there, light, unexamined.
But your smile doesn’t quite hold. Not because of her, just the shape of it. The idea of it.
Of spending your days sorting through other people’s lives, holding them briefly in your hands, only to set them aside again without ever touching your own.
It isn’t new. It has crossed your mind before, faint enough to ignore, easy enough to place beneath something else. But hearing it said, out loud, simple as that, it doesn’t pass the same way. It stays. Just slightly longer than it ever has before.
You don’t answer to what she says, caught up in yourself.
The path widens slightly as you move further across the base, splitting into smaller directions, people crossing through them without hesitation, each step already decided before it’s taken.
Ahead, a group gathers.
You don’t mean to look, but you do.
Pilots.
Easy to tell. Not just the uniforms, but by the way they carry themselves. Looser. Louder. Like the rules don’t sit quite as tightly on them.
And then, him.
Not set apart. Not standing ahead.
Just, in the middle.
One of them is saying something, animated, hands moving as he talks, the others reacting in bursts of ‘Cart this’, ‘Evans that’, laughter, interruptions, the kind of overlapping noise that doesn’t wait its turn.
Jeongguk leans slightly into it, head tipped just enough, a grin that comes easy, unconfined.
It’s different from the train.
This version of him doesn’t hold back.
You look away first.
“You see?” Millie says quietly beside you, her head tilting towards your shoulder, not bothering to hide it. “I told you.”
“Well, I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.”
You keep walking, eyes steady ahead of you, even if hers aren’t.
After precisely four steps, “Which one?” she presses.
You don’t answer.
“Fine,” she says lightly, a small shrug taking place in the corner of your eyes. “Keep your secrets.”
You reach the point where the path splits. Her direction. Yours.
“I’ll come find you later,” she says, already half-turning.
“You don’t know where I’ll be.”
“I’ll manage.”
A small pause.
“Try not to disappear,” she adds walking backwards and half-shouting from her distance.
“I won’t.” You reply with the same half-shout.
You’ve both turned away from each-other at this point, when she murmurs a short, “You will.” to herself with a delicate smile, something you don’t quite catch.
You continue forward, reach the corridor to your office, then stop.
A thought. Small. Immediate.
You pull your bag up by its straps, from where it’s hanging lower.
You check your bag. Once. Nothing.
“…Right,” you whisper under your breath.
You turn back.
The corridor is narrower than it needs to be, or perhaps it only feels that way when people insist on moving through it all at once.
You’re halfway through it, a stack of files balanced more carefully than you’d like to admit, attention split between the names on the top sheet and the sound of someone calling after you from somewhere behind.
You’re not paying enough attention. That’s the first mistake. The second, turning the corner too quickly.
You turn the corner—
and collide.
Not hard. Just enough.
Your shoulder catches a chest, the papers slip before you can stop them, edges catching against one another before scattering cleanly to the floor.
A beat.
Silence, brief and misplaced.
Then—
“Well,” a voice says, even, almost thoughtful. “That seems inefficient.”
You blink once, looking down at the mess at your feet before lifting your gaze.
He’s already looking at you.
Of course he is.
There’s no hesitation in him, no flicker of apology waiting to land. Just that same steady, unreadable ease, as though the moment has arranged itself around him rather than the other way around.
“You walked into me,” you say, crouching to gather the papers, tone level but not entirely unbothered.
“I don’t think that’s accurate.”
You let out a quiet breath through your nose, stacking what you can without looking at him properly.
“No?”
“No,” he says, just as simply. “You were in the way.”
That earns it, a glance.
Not sharp, not surprised. Just enough to meet Jeongguks eyes this time.
“And you,” you reply, smoothing one of the creased edges with your thumb, “were apparently aiming.”
The corner of his mouth shifts, not quite a smile, but close enough to recognise the shape of one.
“My bad, darling.”
A pause settles, not awkward, just there how it would be, in the midst of a busy corridor.
You reach for the last sheet at the same moment he does. His hand stills, just slightly, before pulling back, letting you take it.
It’s small. Almost nothing.
You straighten, papers gathered once more, adjusting them into something that resembles order.
He watches you do it.
Not in a way that feels invasive, not quite curious either. Just, present.
“You’re—“ he starts.
“Careful.” you cut in lightly, not looking up as you align the corners.
“—on the wrong base this time?” an easy furrow finds itself between his brows, not deep enough to be concern, just habit, like his face knows how to react before he decides to.
You glance at him then, properly this time, one brow lifting just slightly.
And there it is again, that same looseness about him. Not careless, not quite. Just, unbothered in a way that doesn’t feel accidental.
His jacket sits slightly open at the collar, like he’d fixed it once and decided that was enough. Sleeves worn just enough to suggest use, not care. There’s something easy in the way he stands, weight settled like he’s exactly where he expects to be, like the space adjusts around him rather than the other way round.
“You remember that, Lieutenant?”
“Mm,” he hums, shifting his weight just slightly, “Hard to forget someone so committed to poor decisions.”
There it is, that look.
Not quite a grin, not quite restrained either. Something that lingers at the corner of his mouth like it might tip either way depending on how far you let it go.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“For you?” he asks.
“For both of us, I imagine.”
That does it. A real smile this time, brief but it lands properly. It softens something in his face, takes the edge off the smugness without removing it entirely.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought you handled the last mistake quite well.”
“The wrong train?” you say.
“Wrong train,” he affirmatively repeats.
A beat.
You hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary and this time, you notice more. The faint mark near his lips. The way his eyes don’t quite stay still when listening, like he’s always tracking something just beyond what’s being said.
Something displaces, quiet but there.
And for a fleeting second, he notices it too. The pause. The way you don’t look away immediately. It catches somewhere, not enough to name but enough to register.
Theres movement around you again, people passing, voices cutting through the space, but it feels slightly removed for a moment, like the noise belongs somewhere just behind the two of you.
“Well,” he adds, a slight tilt of his head, “you’re making a habit of this.”
You glance down briefly at the papers in your hands, then back at him. “Except, it’s you that seems to be in the way more often than I’d expect.”
“Where’s the fun in not being in your way?”
You almost smile.
“I mean, you’ve made quite the impression.” he continues, easy now, a small nod towards you.
You tilt your head a fraction. “By getting on the wrong train?” your teeth catch your bottom lip in feigned confusion.
“It’s a strong opening.”
A small humoured breath leaves you, almost a laugh but not entirely.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Please do.”
Just as a pause is about to settle, “So,” he says, like the thought has only just occurred to him, “you’ve found your way around Thorpe Abbotts then, i’m guessing.”
You glance past him briefly, towards the stretch of base behind.
“Something like that.”
“Office work?”
You look back at him, the corner of your mouth lifting in astonishment, “You remember much more than you let on.”
He huffs a quiet breath, something almost amused. “I remember what’s useful.”
“And was I, Lieutenant?”
That earns something sharper, more deliberate. His gaze settles properly now.
“Jeongguk,” he corrects, easy, like it’s nothing.
You glance at the name on his uniform, again. You already knew.
“Right,” you say. A beat. “I’ll try not to forget this time.”
There’s the faintest flicker of something in his expression at that, interest maybe, possibly something else entirely.
“I’d be disappointed if you did.”
Before you can answer, a voice cuts from down the corridor—
“Jeon!”
He doesn’t look away from you immediately, just lifts a hand slightly in acknowledgment.
“Hold that thought,” he says, though it doesn’t feel like a request.
“I wrot—“ just as he’s about to begin saying the next thing, another voice, closer now—
“Jeongguk, move, we’re needed—“
He exhales lightly, something between a sigh and a laugh.
“Duty calls.”
“So I’ve heard.”
A brief pause. His eyes scanning your face in a once-over. Then, “I suppose I’ll see you around,”
Again, it doesn’t seem like a question. You shift the papers once in your hands, steadying them.
“You might.”
That almost-smile again.
“Try not to get lost.”
You meet it, just enough.
“No promises, Jeongguk”
Another second, just one, where something more could be said.
Then, he steps back, turning as the others close in around him, conversation picking up where it must have left off before you existed in it.
And just like that, he’s folded back into motion, Into noise. Into everything else.
You stand there a moment longer than you should.
Then someone brushes past your shoulder, muttering an apology you don't quite catch, and the corridor returns all at once. You adjust the papers again, even though they're already straight and continue on, in the opposite direction to him.
As if nothing has happened.
As if something hasn't.
Unbeknownst to you, Jeongguk takes a look over his shoulders, exactly when he knows you’ve walked away, and for a moment, he just watches you go, his head tilted the whole time, like he’s trying to place something that doesn’t quite sit where it should.
Then, a quiet breath through his nose. “…Right.”
After a moment, Jeongguk falls a step or two in front of them. He doesn’t get far.
“Oi—Romeo!”
He doesn’t stop. That’s his first mistake.
“What was that?” Taehyung calls, already grinning, falling into step beside him. “You actually having a conversation?”
“Didn’t think he knew how,” Carter adds from behind.
Jeongguk exhales lightly through his nose, not slowing his pace. “I do when it’s worth it.”
That lands.
“Oho—“ Taehyung lets out, looking over his shoulder toward the rest of the boys behind him, whilst nudging Jeongguk. “Hear that?”
“Careful,” Mills cuts in, “he might start writing letters next.”
A small ripple of laughter breaks out.
Jeongguk shakes his head once, slightly at that, but there’s something there now, something just off his usual rhythm.
Taehyung catches it. Of course he does.
“…You’ve either wrote one or you’re thinking about it,” he says, quieter this time, intentionally between just them.
Jeongguk doesn’t answer.
Which is answer enough.
Taehyung grins, wider now. “God help us.”
————
The hours that follow make the office quieter than it should be, as if for every minute that passes, time takes ten-fold of it. Or maybe you brought that quiet in with you.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor as you pull yourself closer to the desk over time, papers waiting where you’d left them in the morning, untouched, unchanged.
When you notice the light that’s still peaking through the window, falling differently on the paper you’re working on, you sit up. For the first time in hours, you look up, drawn not by thought but by instinct, toward the dusty ledge of the window. And for a moment, you don’t move.
Then it passes.
There are only a few letters left.
So you lower your eyes again, just as quickly as you’d lost it, fingers finding their rhythm once more as if nothing had interrupted them at all.
Lift. Read. Redact. Sort. Place.
It comes back easily. Too easily. Ink to ink. Names to names. Lives reduced to something that can be folded, stamped and sent away.
Until, you stop.
Not because of the name. Never because of the name. Because of the way it’s written.
‘My darling,’
Your eyes move, steady at first.
‘I hope this reaches you before anything else does.’
A small crease takes place between your brows.
You’ve read this before, not these words, but this shape of them. Careful. Controlled. Missing something.
Your thumb presses lightly into the edge of the paper as you continue.
‘I have been told to keep this brief, so I will try, though you know I’ve never been very good at that.’
There’s that carefulness again, that tip-toeing around what matters.
‘Time is passing strangely here. Days feel like hours until they don’t, and then it seems weeks have gone without me noticing at all.’
Your fingers are digging into your palm now, nails carving half-moons into the skin.
‘I keep thinking of the last morning before I left, how you stood in the doorway with your hair still undone, saying something I didn’t quite catch because I was already halfway out. I’ve been trying to remember it properly, but it won’t come back the way it should.’
Your brows furrow deeper.
‘I think I assumed there would be time to ask you again.’
Your lip twitches as you try to swallow. Not noticeably, just enough.
Your eyes continue.
‘They tell us not to write much about where we are or what we’re doing. I suppose that makes sense. There are things here I wouldn’t know how to explain even if I could.’
A line break, shorter now.
‘If you don’t hear from me again, I don’t want you to think it was because I didn’t try.’
Your hand falls still, nails lift from their etched dips in your palm.
‘It only means—‘
The sentence ends there.
Not finished. Not crossed out. Just, left.
Your eyes linger on it longer than it should.
Then drops, almost reluctantly, to the final line squeezed beneath, scrawled smaller, as if added after everything else had already been decided.
‘I should have stayed a moment longer.’
Silence. Pure unfiltered silence, not in the room. In you.
Instinctively, your body mulls over with trembling softness as you move the tops of your fingers to rest at the edge of the paper once again.
Then, as careful as your body allows, you turn the page over.
Nothing.
So, your fingers naturally trace the indent that the words on the front have left, hollowed out on the back. Feeling the indentation of the words rather than reading them now.
You don’t reach for the next letter.
You sit with this one.
And you don’t know how long you sit there for, until—
a knock.
You don’t look up immediately. But another knock lands on the doorframe straight-away, lighter this time.
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken root in there,” Millie’s voice carries through, already half-amused.
You look back down at the paper in your hands, then at the small stack beside you, then at nothing in particular.
“This looks promising,” she says, stepping in without waiting. “Come on.”
You look at up at her from where she’s stood, leaning against the open doorframe. Then back at the stack.
“I still have—“
“You will always still have,” she cuts in. “That’s the problem.”
A beat.
You don’t argue. Instead, you gather what’s left into something resembling order, aligning the edges once, twice, before leaving them where they are. The only paper you set aside is the one you read last, you move it, not atop the pile, just besides it.
“Good,” Millie says, satisfied, already turning back toward the door. “I refuse to let you spend another evening reading about other people’s tragedies.”
You pause only a second longer, eyes flicking once to the letter you set aside, then you finally stand.
And follow.
───
By the time you reach the bunks, you’ve already worn yourself thin trying to convince Millie you’re tired. Tired enough to be left alone, at least for tonight.
It doesn’t take.
“You’re coming,” she says, already halfway through changing, blouse pulled over her head with little regard for the argument.
“Millie, it’s just tonight—”
“No,” she cuts in, voice muffled briefly before reappearing, sharper now. “Not tonight. No chance.”
And so, you’re here.
The bar is louder than it has any right to be.
Not polished, not orderly, just thoroughly alive. Chairs scraping, boots knocking into table legs, voices overlapping without waiting their turn. Someone laughs too loudly near the back, another voice rising over it in mock argument. Glass meets wood in uneven rhythm. The kind of noise that doesn’t demand attention, only fills the space so nothing else has to.
It feels like something just short of reckless.
“You’re late,” Adeline says immediately, though she’s smiling when she does.
“I wasn’t coming.”
“And yet,” Elsie adds, not looking up, her fingers slow around the base of her glass, turning it in small, absent circles, “here you are.”
The bench is slightly sticky beneath your palms when you steady yourself, dress swaying, the table uneven enough that your glass tilts before it settles. Elsie presses a drink into your hand before you can refuse it, her movements efficient, practised.
You let it happen.
Three drinks in, the noise has shifted from something you’re aware of, to something that presses at the edges of everything.
Not overwhelming. Just inescapable.
From across the room, it’s worse.
“What are we doing, gentlemen— what is this?” Taehyung’s tipsy voice cuts through the noise, one hand thrown out toward the table like he’s presenting a spectacle that’s far grander than it is.
“It’s called entertainment, Tex,” Carter shoots back, not looking up from where he’s lining up a dart with far too much concentration.
“It’s called missing, Cart,” Mills adds, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve been ‘lining that up’ for the last five minutes.”
“I’m calculating.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Same thing.”
A small burst of laughter follows.
Then, Jeongguk pushes forward through them.
“Move,” he says, not forceful, just loud enough to be obeyed.
“Here he is,” Evan mutters. “Good God.”
“Gentlemen,” Jeongguk announces, dragging a hand through his hair, already half-smiling like he knows exactly how this ends, “you’re embarrassing yourselves.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Taehyung says, stepping aside just enough.
You don’t realise you’ve gone still until Adeline’s elbow brushes yours.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she murmurs.
“Do what?”
“That,” she says, glancing past you. “Whatever that is.”
You try looking away, to the girls, to your drink, you truly do. But the room doesn’t quite let you.
Jeongguk grabs an apple off the table.
Turns it once in his hand.
Then, with zero hesitation,
“Whoo!”
It’s loud. Sharp. Completely unnecessary.
The room reacts anyway.
“Sit down—sit down, you idiot—” Cart starts. Too late.
Jeongguk’s already stepping back, planting himself against the wall, tossing the apple once before setting it in place, on-top of his head.
“You miss Cart,” he says, pointing lazily at Carter with two fingers, “I’ll make sure you’re at the back of any formation for the next two months.”
Jeongguks hand is large enough to cover his whole face when it comes up. The only movement being where he separates his pointer finger and middle finger, a make-shift peephole for his eyes.
“Jeon—” Taehyung starts, laughing now, already knowing this is going badly.
“Relax, Tex,” Jeongguk cuts in, easy, cocky. “You worry too much.”
“Take the shot!” someone shouts from behind.
Carter exhales sharply. Throws the dart.
Your fingers twitch once around your glass.
Thunk.
The apple splits. Half of it drops. The other barely shifts.
The table erupts.
Jeongguk pushes himself off the wall, looking down at the apple like it personally offended him.
He’s there, yes, in the familiar yellow sheepskin jacket, but it’s not like before.
He isn’t contained in a moment or a conversation. Not something you can place neatly into memory. He’s louder. Looser. Surrounded.
He steps forward like he belongs there and the room shifts to accommodate him. Sharp. Unrestrained.
Mumbles of the conversation hit your ears in paused moments.
You catch the “Bit off,” you catch the laughter. Easy and effortless—
“Bit off?” Mills repeats. “You’re still alive.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that’s off.” Taehyung adds on, laughing.
“Alright, who’s next?” Evans calls.
“Not him,” Taehyung says immediately. “He’s had enough.”
“I’ve had exactly enough,” Jeongguk corrects, already reaching for someone’s drink that isn’t his.
“That’s not yours—”
“Mhm.” he hums as best he can with his head tipped back.
It doesn’t match anything you’ve seen of him before. Not the train. Not the corridor. This is different.
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath after the drink, something close to a laugh, rubbing briefly at the back of his neck as the moment dissolves into something else, another story, another voice, another shift in the room.
It moves quickly. It always does.
Because you’re still watching, you also catch the girl approaching him.
Someone steps into his space and he lets them.
A girl, familiar enough in the way most faces here become. She’s smiling before she speaks, already leaning in like she expects to be let closer.
“You’re insane.” She blinks up at him, not over-dramatically, just with quiet intention, certain.
“I’ve heard worse.”
“You could’ve been hurt.”
He glances at her then.
Not dismissive. Not interested.
Just enough to answer.
“I wasn’t.”
She stays anyway. They usually do.
It doesn’t require much from him, just the right responses, spaced out enough to pass as attention. A nod here. A word there. Nothing that asks him to give more than he intends to.
Her hand brushes his sleeve.
From where you stand, it looks like he leans down to hear her better.
You look away, too quickly, then back.
He shifts, barely noticeable. Not pulling away. Just not staying where she expects him to be.
The conversation carries on around them, changing shape without asking permission.
Your hands grip glass so tight, the condensation trickles up and over the path of your fingers, as if reluctant to break up the moment.
From the opposite side of the room, it also looks like something.
But, Taehyung notices first. Of course he does.
He watches the interaction for exactly two seconds before muttering to Mills, “He’s not even listening.”
Mills glances over.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Back with Jeongguk, the girl’s still talking. Still trying. Still leaning in.
He nods once.
Another half-second too late.
“Right,” he says.
Wrong response. Doesn’t matter.
Her hand lingers, but he shifts. Not obvious. Just enough.
Taehyung smirks.
“There it is.”
“Jeon!” Cart calls out again. “You flirtin’ or surviving over there?”
Jeongguk doesn’t look at him.
“Multitasking.”
“Poorly!”
“Better than you throw.” Jeongguk says, a mumble more to himself and the boys closest in distance to him.
But the room reacts again, laughter, shouting, noise folding over itself.
“Come on,” Millie says, tugging lightly at your sleeve. “If you’re going to pretend you’re not interested, at least do it closer.”
“I’m not—“ you begin.
But you let her pull you a few steps further in.
And somewhere in it, he looks up.
And then, something catches in his eyes. Not a sound. Not a name.
Just, movement. He looks up. Not necessarily searching, neither expecting to find anything.
And there you are.
Across the room.
It throws something off, only slightly.
“—Jeon?” He looks down. The girl, still there, still talking.
He hadn’t caught a word.
“You look busy.”
A beat.
“Something like that.”
“You want a drink?” she offers after momentary silence.
He looks past her again
It takes a second. Not to recognise you, but to place you here.
In this.
In the noise, the light, the movement.
Not in a train compartment or a corridor halfway between somewhere and somewhere else.
Not in memory.
Everything else stays loud. But that moment caught by Jeongguk, doesn’t.
“…Maybe later,” he says.
It’s not a yes. She takes it like one anyway, but he’s already half-turned.
───
In a sense, you see it before it happens. The shift, the ease of it.
She steps in close. Too close.
‘You’re insane.’
You look away, your finger twitching at the thought, mind lagging behind your body.
It looks easy, that’s the worst part.
Like it requires nothing from him, like it happens often.
Adeline watches you now instead of him.
“Oh, this is excellent,” she mutters.
“Don’t.” Elsie nudges her.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
He nods at something the girl says. Late. Slightly off.
You notice. You don’t know why you notice.
Her hand rests against his arm. He shifts. Barely.
Your gaze lingers a second longer.
“…he’s not even listening,” someone says near him.
You don’t hear who. You don’t need to.
You look down at your drink, at the pleats in your dress, at anything.
Then, back up.
And this time, he’s looking at you.
Not by accident.
The noise doesn’t stop. Nothing changes.
But the moment, holds.
No smile. No gesture.
Just, recognition. Again.
Then, someone pulls him away “Jeon, you’re up again—“
The moment breaks. Just like that. The room rushes back in.
He doesn't look for you again. Doesn't need to. He already knows where you are. And somehow, that's worse, for him or for you, you don’t know.
You don’t realise, not at first, that you’re still looking at the space he left behind. As if something of him is still there. As if looking long enough would profess him again, a minute longer than these fleeting moments. This time with that same loose version of him from tonight.
Adeline leans in immediately.
“Careful,” Adeline murmurs from behind your shoulder, as she joins you appearing from nowhere. “They’re contagious.”
You don’t look at her.
“Who?”
She tilts her chin slightly, you don’t follow it.
“Pilots,” she says.
Millie laughs. “Too late for that.”
“Stop, A.” you say, shaking your head faintly, though there’s no real weight behind it.
“Jeon’s worst than most,” Adeline adds, almost thoughtfully.
That, you don’t react to.
“Is he?” Millie asks, far too interested.
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “The kind that knows it.”
Noise swells back in, quick to cover what just was. The night carries on, and by the time you leave, the cooler and quieter air feels unfamiliar.
The door swings shut behind you, cutting the noise in half, though it still spills faintly into the night, laughter trailing after you like something unfinished.
“It’s freezing,” Elsie mutters, teeth already grinding, she pulls her coat tighter around herself.
“It’s refreshing,” Millie corrects.
“It’s cold,” Elsie repeats.
Adeline says nothing at first. She just looks at you.
You feel it brush over you.
“What?” you ask, adjusting your sleeve, though there’s nothing wrong with it.
“Nothing,” she says.
A beat.
“Absolutely nothing.”
Millie snorts. “That’s worse.”
You glance between them. “I don’t know what you think you’ve seen—”
“Oh, we haven’t seen anything,” Adeline cuts in lightly.
Elsie hums. “Not a thing.”
Millie nods, far too eager. “No, no. Completely uneventful evening.”
You let out a small breath, something between a laugh and disbelief.
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” Adeline says, stepping down off the curb, “you came out anyway.”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“Mm,” Elsie cuts in, a quiet sound, but pointed.
You stop walking for half a second.
Just enough for them to notice.
“Oh, this is excellent,” Millie murmurs, looping her arm through yours before you can move ahead of them. “She’s thinking about it.”
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
“Dangerous,” Adeline says.
“For who?” you shoot back.
All three of them exchange a look.
“For you,” Elsie says simply.
You scoff softly, though it doesn’t quite land.
“That’s dramatic.”
“Is it?” Adeline tilts her head slightly. “Because from where I was standing—”
“Please, you were standing too far away to make any kind of observation, A.”
“I was standing exactly where I needed to be.”
Millie laughs under her breath. “You didn’t even blink,” she adds.
At that, you falter.
“I’m sorry, what?” you say, nose and eyebrows scrunched in slight confusion.
“Not once,” Elsie says.
“That’s not even possible.”
“It is when you’re staring,” Adeline replies.
“I wasn’t staring.”
They all look at you again.
You sigh.
“Even if I was,” you say, a touch sharper now, “Is there a problem?”
“Of course not,” Millie agrees immediately.
Too quickly.
“Nothing ever is a problem,” Elsie adds.
Adeline smiles, slow and knowing.
“Especially not Lieutenants who put apples on their heads in crowded bars.”
That, you don’t respond to, finding no worth in debating the notion.
You just keep walking.
They let you. For a few steps.
Then—
“So,” Millie says, lighter now, like she’s moved on, but if you look close enough at the twitch in her chin, you’ll find she hasn’t moved on. “are we going back tomorrow?”
You glance at her.
“No.”
A beat.
“…probably not.” you add, eyes downcast.
Three quiet smiles pass between them.
You don’t see them.
Instead, you focus on the last few steps toward the building, closing the distance with quiet intent, like it might settle something if you just keep moving.
Inside, heels tap against the floorboards, coats are shrugged off, the room reshapes itself around your return with practiced ease. It doesn’t take long for all of you to fall back into routine.
Millie’s already tossing her scarf somewhere it won’t stay. Elsie bends at the edge of her bed, slipping off her shoes with a quiet exhale. Adeline crosses to the window, pushing it shut with a firm hand like it had any business being open at all.
Then, “Oh, girls. Post.”
It isn’t announced like it matters. It always is. The room shifts anyways. Not dramatically, just an unmarked awareness.
Adeline is already halfway across the room before the rest of you properly look up.
“Oh, don’t pretend you weren’t waiting,” she says, reaching for the small stack before it’s fully handed over.
“I wasn’t,” Elsie replies, not moving from her bed.
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were reorganising your things.”
“I like things organised.”
“You only like things organised when you’re avoiding something.”
A quiet laugh moves through the room.
“Go on then,” someone says from behind you. “Let’s have it.”
Adeline flips through the envelopes like she’s dealing cards.
“Alright, let’s see who’s loved today.”
“Adeline—”
“Obviously.”
“That was quick.”
“I’m efficient.”
She doesn’t open it immediately, just holds it and smiles at it with a new-found fondness.
“From who?” Elsie asks, finally looking up.
Adeline tilts the envelope slightly, as if considering whether to answer.
“Oh, thank God,” Millie says immediately, snatching it from the pile. “If I’d gone another day without hearing from him, I might’ve had to develop a personality.”
“You should try that anyway,” someone mutters.
Millie ignores it, already opening her letter, scanning it too quickly to be taking anything in.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
“He’s alive.”
“Romantic.”
“That’s enough.”
A pause.
Then, “He says he misses me.”
Adeline softens, just slightly. “That’s better.”
The cards are shuffled through again.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
The same rhythm, different tone.
“Anyone got anything interesting?” Adeline asks, tearing her envelope open now.
“Yes,” Elsie says dryly. “Three pages about rationing.”
“Thrilling.”
“I like him.”
“You would.”
“Who’s that from?” someone asks Millie, leaning over.
That’s not how it works here. It leans in, just slightly.
Your eyes find the first lines.
I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.
You don’t react, nor do you finish reading the letter. Not properly.
But, Elsie sees it. Of course she does.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
You fold the letter once.
Carefully.
Too quickly.
“It’s nothing.”
A pause, truly deeper this time.
Then, “Read it again,” Elsie says, not unkindly.
You glance at her.
“I’ve read it.”
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “And yet.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.
“Late evening lipstick,” she adds lightly. “I knew it.”
You don’t understand the reference.
You don’t ask.
Across the room, Millie says something, light, bright enough to catch if you wanted to, followed by a small spill of laughter that lifts and fades just as easily. Elsie answers in her quieter way, something dry, something precise, and it lands the same, softer this time. It drifts.
The room settles back into its small habits, fabric shifting, hands moving, the quiet rhythm of things being folded, set down, picked up again. Familiar motions, half-seen, half-heard.
You register it.
The shape of it. The sound, but it doesn’t quite reach you.
Because the letter rests unfolded in your hands and you’re looking at it, again.
As though the rest of the room has slipped a step behind and this, this single page, has taken its place.
You shift where you sit.
Not fully, just enough that your knee presses into the edge of the bedframe, grounding, though you don’t register the contact until a dull pressure settles there. Your shoulders draw in a fraction, instinctive, protective, like you’ve been caught in something you don’t yet understand.
‘I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.’
A small shift in the ink, like he paused.
‘I suppose that makes this unnecessary.
But I had a quiet moment, which doesnt happen often here, and it felt like a waste not to use it.’
A pause.
‘Have you seen Thorpe Abbotts at sunset?’
Your lips part, just barely, like you’re about to say something, though there’s no one to say it to. The breath that follows is shallow, uneven in a way you don’t quite correct, and it leaves you through your nose instead, quieter than it should be.
‘It’s quieter then. There’s a stretch past the hangars where the light catches the field properly.
Does a better job of it than any light ever could.’
There’s a faint pull between your brows now, not dramatic, not sharp, just a small, persistent tension that refuses to ease. It lingers even when your eyes move on, as though your expression hasn’t quite caught up with your thoughts.
Your thumb drags once along the margin of the page. A slow movement. Absent. You don’t feel the texture of it, only the motion.
You tilt the paper slightly, angling it toward the light without thinking, like clarity might come from seeing it differently. It doesn’t. The last line remains exactly as it is, steady, unchanged, offering nothing more than they already have.
The final words don’t hold anything unclear, that’s not the problem.
Still, something in your chest misplaces itself reading over them.
Your fingers shift their hold, loosening now, though not enough to let the paper fall. You don’t fold it. Don’t move to set it aside.
You just hold it. Still.
And for a moment, longer than you’d care to admit, you don’t think about the room, or the girls, or the sound of anything beyond your own breathing.
Only the letter. The lines at the bottom of the page.
And the quiet, unsteady awareness that you should put it down,
and don’t.
‘If you’re there tomorrow, you’ll find me.
If not, I suppose that answers that.
—J.’
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
With this chapter, any thoughts regarding anything about what you read or what you want to read in the later chapters are so cherished! please let me know!
i'm so sorry for tagging you guys, i just tagged the first likers and rebloggers of the post to be in the taglist, i really really hope you guys don't mind, ill only use your names for this first taglist, after this chapter i won't, it's only purely because not many people commented, again sorry and thank you so much angels!
As life on base at Thorpe Abbotts settles into something familiar, an unexpected encounter with Jeongguk shifts the day, and night out with the girls at a crowded bar, reveals more than you’d intended to notice. Shifts things in ways neither of you quite acknowledge.
pairings: pilot jk x fem! postal-clerk reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O3 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 6.7k
average reading time - 37 minutes
─── [💌] THE ROM-COM CHAPTER IS FINALLY HERE. i hope you guys come to like this just as much as i do, i hope you see the difference from the different chapters to this, hopefully the next chapters going to be soppy romance, i’m trying to cover different vibes each chapter, ch1 = reminiscing, ch2 = slight nostalgia, ch3 = rom-com, ch4 = teeth-rotting romance, coming out 15/20th of May 2026. i hope what you take away from this, is that things look different from everyone’s perspective, stop being so harsh on yourself. the only thing that’s gotten me through this is your comments, i hold so much love for your small thoughts! love you angels! back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O3 - COLLISION COURSE
On this particular morning, the room is louder, it’s already awake before you’re fully in it. Not chaotic, just thorough.
“You have three of the same shade.”
“I do not.”
“You do,” Adeline insists, already halfway across the room, holding up two lipsticks like evidence. “This one—“ she lifts one, “—and this one—“ another, “are identical.” The lipstick cases are dramatically drawn up in the air, a fraction past where her widened eyes are.
“They are not identical.”
“They are identical.”
“They are entirely different.”
“They’re both red.”
“One is deeper.”
“They’re both red, Elsie.”
A quiet snort comes from somewhere behind you. “You’re both unbearable, that’s what.” someone mumbles.
Elsie reaches over, plucking one from Adeline’s hand. “This is evening.”
“And the other?”
“Late evening.”
Adeline’s face drops, her hands that are holding the lipsticks, drop from the air.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not a distinction,” Adeline says, turning with both lipsticks raised back up again. “That’s the same mistake twice.”
“It isn’t a mistake.”
“It is when no one can tell the difference.”
“You can’t tell the difference, A.”
“No, no one can tell the difference.”
You don’t mean to smile and you apparently don’t stop it quickly enough.
Adeline catches it immediately.
“Oh, don’t do that.” Her brows start to scrunch, her face slowly following.
“Do what?” you reply, not looking up, though guilty amusement evident in your raised brow.
“That—“ she gestures vaguely toward your face, “—that quiet little agreement. It encourages her.”
“Elsie dear, you’ve organised them by time of day.”
“That’s just what being practical is, Adeline.”
“That’s concerning.”
Another ripple of quiet laughter follows, softer this time. Familiar.
You shift the stack of letters you didn’t finish last night, in your hands, aligning the edges without thinking, thumb pressing slightly along the paper as though it might settle something beyond itself.
“Anyway,” Adeline says, abandoning the lipsticks entirely now, “what’s the plan today? Please don’t say ‘more of the same’, good God, i’ll lose the will to live.”
“It’s more of the same,” Elsie replies.
“I hate that for me.”
Millie finally stands, smoothing her skirt in quick, unnecessary motions. “You always hate it. You just complain differently each time.”
“That’s called variety.”
“No, it’s called repetition.”
Adeline is still looking at Millie but throws her hand up to point at Elsie, “You’re becoming her.”
“I am not.”
“You are—“
“Alright, alright, let’s stop now, it’s too early in the morning for this. Move the topic along.” Elsie voices, an exhausted, humoured sigh leaving her.
Adeline’s ready to rebut what she said, mouth already opening.
“Jeon’s lot came back yesterday.” Elsie blurts.
It slips in like it belongs there. No build-up. No emphasis.
The room doesn’t stop, just slightly tilts.
“Did they?” Millie asks, too quickly to be uninterested.
“Mm,” Elsie hums. “Late.”
“Heard it wasn’t clean.”
“It never is.”
Adeline exhales softly through her nose, not quite a laugh. “That’s reassuring.”
You don’t look up, not straight away. Your fingers move, lift, place. The same rhythm. You try tuning out the conversation, try pushing anything into your mind to take the place that his presence is etching there.
“Which one’s Jeon?” Millie asks, lip pouted, glancing between them.
Adeline tilts her head slightly. “You’d know.”
“Why would I know?”
“You just would.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
You blink once, hard. With your head still down, you try adjusting the edge of the stack again but it doesn’t need adjusting.
“Is he the loud one?” Millie continues.
“There are several loud ones.”
“The worse kind.”
“The only kind.” Adeline corrects, eyebrows arched high, lips pursed in an all-knowing look.
Elsie finally looks up. Briefly. Her gaze flicks past them, then to you. Then away again.
“He’s not the worst of them,” she says.
A pause. Small, but it holds.
“How would you know?” Adeline asks lightly with light confusion fluttering across her face.
Elsie shrugs once. “You hear things.”
“You listen too much, E.”
“Or maybe, you don’t listen enough.”
Millie leans in slightly. “So which one is he?”
Another beat. Another interval for your mind to try compose itself.
Elsie doesn’t answer. Not directly.
“You’ll know,” she says instead.
Adeline smiles at that. Slow. Knowing.
“Oh, that’s irritating,” she mummers, with a light roll of her eyes, picking up her bag before heading toward the door, her now overly smoothed-down nurse uniform sitting just right where she’s adjusted it once too many times.
You keep your eyes on the paper bundle as you stand up, ready to follow Millie’s path to the door. You don’t chirp in. You don’t ask. But something, quietly and inconveniently, has already shifted.
Not enough to name. Not enough to matter.
Just enough that, as you fall into step behind the others, the rhythm you’d settled into, no longer feels entirely your own.
“Bar later?” Millie says from where she’s walking in-front of you, half over her shoulder, half to no one in particular.
Adeline lets out a soft breath that almost passes as a laugh. “If Matron doesn’t decide we’ve all committed some unforgivable offence by just existing.”
“She might,” Elsie adds, now stood up, adjusting the cuff of her sleeve with quiet precision. “She’s been looking for a reason all week.”
“That’s because you gave her one,” Adeline replies.
“I gave her nothing.”
“You reorganised her filing system without asking.”
“It was inefficient.”
“It was not yours.”
A pause.
“Well,” Millie says lightly, reaching for the door, “We’ll go anyway, I want to see each and every one of you there, girls.”
No one agrees. No one refuses. And somehow, that feels like an answer.
Outside, the base spills into motion.
Jeeps rattle past in uneven bursts, tyres biting into loose gravel, a horn sounding once, ignored. Someone jogs across your path with a clipboard clutched too tightly, nearly colliding with a pair of mechanics hauling a crate between them, their sleeves already darkened with oil. Laughter breaks out somewhere to your right, cut short by a sharp call of a name that doesn’t get answered the first time.
A line of pilots crosses ahead, cutting through the flow like they’ve already decided where they’re meant to be before anyone else has caught up to it. One of them walks backwards mid-conversation, gesturing wildly, nearly walking straight into a passing officer who doesn’t even slow.
Further out, a bicycle weaves recklessly between it all, earning a shouted insult and a half-hearted wave in return.
No one stops. Not properly. Everything just moves around everything else.
Millie falls into step beside you without asking, the click-clacks of yours and her low-heeled shoes matching coincidentally.
“You are coming later,” she says, as though the conversation has already been decided.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t.” You take a single look at her by your side, then back to the vast base runway ahead of you.
“You didn’t say you were.”
“That’s not the same thing.” A small laugh from you escapes naturally.
“It is to me.”
You glance at her briefly, again. “That explains a lot.”
A soft smile takes place on your face at her antics.
She nudges your arm lightly with hers as you walk. “You need it.”
“I don’t.”
“You really do.”
“I don’t.” You say firmly, even despite your growing smile.
“You’ve been reading other people’s lives for weeks,” she says. “At some point you have to have one of your own.”
With Millie, it never comes from anywhere complicated. She says what she thinks and leaves it there, light, unexamined.
But your smile doesn’t quite hold. Not because of her, just the shape of it. The idea of it.
Of spending your days sorting through other people’s lives, holding them briefly in your hands, only to set them aside again without ever touching your own.
It isn’t new. It has crossed your mind before, faint enough to ignore, easy enough to place beneath something else. But hearing it said, out loud, simple as that, it doesn’t pass the same way. It stays. Just slightly longer than it ever has before.
You don’t answer to what she says, caught up in yourself.
The path widens slightly as you move further across the base, splitting into smaller directions, people crossing through them without hesitation, each step already decided before it’s taken.
Ahead, a group gathers.
You don’t mean to look, but you do.
Pilots.
Easy to tell. Not just the uniforms, but by the way they carry themselves. Looser. Louder. Like the rules don’t sit quite as tightly on them.
And then, him.
Not set apart. Not standing ahead.
Just, in the middle.
One of them is saying something, animated, hands moving as he talks, the others reacting in bursts of ‘Cart this’, ‘Evans that’, laughter, interruptions, the kind of overlapping noise that doesn’t wait its turn.
Jeongguk leans slightly into it, head tipped just enough, a grin that comes easy, unconfined.
It’s different from the train.
This version of him doesn’t hold back.
You look away first.
“You see?” Millie says quietly beside you, her head tilting towards your shoulder, not bothering to hide it. “I told you.”
“Well, I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.”
You keep walking, eyes steady ahead of you, even if hers aren’t.
After precisely four steps, “Which one?” she presses.
You don’t answer.
“Fine,” she says lightly, a small shrug taking place in the corner of your eyes. “Keep your secrets.”
You reach the point where the path splits. Her direction. Yours.
“I’ll come find you later,” she says, already half-turning.
“You don’t know where I’ll be.”
“I’ll manage.”
A small pause.
“Try not to disappear,” she adds walking backwards and half-shouting from her distance.
“I won’t.” You reply with the same half-shout.
You’ve both turned away from each-other at this point, when she murmurs a short, “You will.” to herself with a delicate smile, something you don’t quite catch.
You continue forward, reach the corridor to your office, then stop.
A thought. Small. Immediate.
You pull your bag up by its straps, from where it’s hanging lower.
You check your bag. Once. Nothing.
“…Right,” you whisper under your breath.
You turn back.
The corridor is narrower than it needs to be, or perhaps it only feels that way when people insist on moving through it all at once.
You’re halfway through it, a stack of files balanced more carefully than you’d like to admit, attention split between the names on the top sheet and the sound of someone calling after you from somewhere behind.
You’re not paying enough attention. That’s the first mistake. The second, turning the corner too quickly.
You turn the corner—
and collide.
Not hard. Just enough.
Your shoulder catches a chest, the papers slip before you can stop them, edges catching against one another before scattering cleanly to the floor.
A beat.
Silence, brief and misplaced.
Then—
“Well,” a voice says, even, almost thoughtful. “That seems inefficient.”
You blink once, looking down at the mess at your feet before lifting your gaze.
He’s already looking at you.
Of course he is.
There’s no hesitation in him, no flicker of apology waiting to land. Just that same steady, unreadable ease, as though the moment has arranged itself around him rather than the other way around.
“You walked into me,” you say, crouching to gather the papers, tone level but not entirely unbothered.
“I don’t think that’s accurate.”
You let out a quiet breath through your nose, stacking what you can without looking at him properly.
“No?”
“No,” he says, just as simply. “You were in the way.”
That earns it, a glance.
Not sharp, not surprised. Just enough to meet Jeongguks eyes this time.
“And you,” you reply, smoothing one of the creased edges with your thumb, “were apparently aiming.”
The corner of his mouth shifts, not quite a smile, but close enough to recognise the shape of one.
“My bad, darling.”
A pause settles, not awkward, just there how it would be, in the midst of a busy corridor.
You reach for the last sheet at the same moment he does. His hand stills, just slightly, before pulling back, letting you take it.
It’s small. Almost nothing.
You straighten, papers gathered once more, adjusting them into something that resembles order.
He watches you do it.
Not in a way that feels invasive, not quite curious either. Just, present.
“You’re—“ he starts.
“Careful.” you cut in lightly, not looking up as you align the corners.
“—on the wrong base this time?” an easy furrow finds itself between his brows, not deep enough to be concern, just habit, like his face knows how to react before he decides to.
You glance at him then, properly this time, one brow lifting just slightly.
And there it is again, that same looseness about him. Not careless, not quite. Just, unbothered in a way that doesn’t feel accidental.
His jacket sits slightly open at the collar, like he’d fixed it once and decided that was enough. Sleeves worn just enough to suggest use, not care. There’s something easy in the way he stands, weight settled like he’s exactly where he expects to be, like the space adjusts around him rather than the other way round.
“You remember that, Lieutenant?”
“Mm,” he hums, shifting his weight just slightly, “Hard to forget someone so committed to poor decisions.”
There it is, that look.
Not quite a grin, not quite restrained either. Something that lingers at the corner of his mouth like it might tip either way depending on how far you let it go.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“For you?” he asks.
“For both of us, I imagine.”
That does it. A real smile this time, brief but it lands properly. It softens something in his face, takes the edge off the smugness without removing it entirely.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought you handled the last mistake quite well.”
“The wrong train?” you say.
“Wrong train,” he affirmatively repeats.
A beat.
You hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary and this time, you notice more. The faint mark near his lips. The way his eyes don’t quite stay still when listening, like he’s always tracking something just beyond what’s being said.
Something displaces, quiet but there.
And for a fleeting second, he notices it too. The pause. The way you don’t look away immediately. It catches somewhere, not enough to name but enough to register.
Theres movement around you again, people passing, voices cutting through the space, but it feels slightly removed for a moment, like the noise belongs somewhere just behind the two of you.
“Well,” he adds, a slight tilt of his head, “you’re making a habit of this.”
You glance down briefly at the papers in your hands, then back at him. “Except, it’s you that seems to be in the way more often than I’d expect.”
“Where’s the fun in not being in your way?”
You almost smile.
“I mean, you’ve made quite the impression.” he continues, easy now, a small nod towards you.
You tilt your head a fraction. “By getting on the wrong train?” your teeth catch your bottom lip in feigned confusion.
“It’s a strong opening.”
A small humoured breath leaves you, almost a laugh but not entirely.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Please do.”
Just as a pause is about to settle, “So,” he says, like the thought has only just occurred to him, “you’ve found your way around Thorpe Abbotts then, i’m guessing.”
You glance past him briefly, towards the stretch of base behind.
“Something like that.”
“Office work?”
You look back at him, the corner of your mouth lifting in astonishment, “You remember much more than you let on.”
He huffs a quiet breath, something almost amused. “I remember what’s useful.”
“And was I, Lieutenant?”
That earns something sharper, more deliberate. His gaze settles properly now.
“Jeongguk,” he corrects, easy, like it’s nothing.
You glance at the name on his uniform, again. You already knew.
“Right,” you say. A beat. “I’ll try not to forget this time.”
There’s the faintest flicker of something in his expression at that, interest maybe, possibly something else entirely.
“I’d be disappointed if you did.”
Before you can answer, a voice cuts from down the corridor—
“Jeon!”
He doesn’t look away from you immediately, just lifts a hand slightly in acknowledgment.
“Hold that thought,” he says, though it doesn’t feel like a request.
“I wrot—“ just as he’s about to begin saying the next thing, another voice, closer now—
“Jeongguk, move, we’re needed—“
He exhales lightly, something between a sigh and a laugh.
“Duty calls.”
“So I’ve heard.”
A brief pause. His eyes scanning your face in a once-over. Then, “I suppose I’ll see you around,”
Again, it doesn’t seem like a question. You shift the papers once in your hands, steadying them.
“You might.”
That almost-smile again.
“Try not to get lost.”
You meet it, just enough.
“No promises, Jeongguk”
Another second, just one, where something more could be said.
Then, he steps back, turning as the others close in around him, conversation picking up where it must have left off before you existed in it.
And just like that, he’s folded back into motion, Into noise. Into everything else.
You stand there a moment longer than you should.
Then someone brushes past your shoulder, muttering an apology you don't quite catch, and the corridor returns all at once. You adjust the papers again, even though they're already straight and continue on, in the opposite direction to him.
As if nothing has happened.
As if something hasn't.
Unbeknownst to you, Jeongguk takes a look over his shoulders, exactly when he knows you’ve walked away, and for a moment, he just watches you go, his head tilted the whole time, like he’s trying to place something that doesn’t quite sit where it should.
Then, a quiet breath through his nose. “…Right.”
After a moment, Jeongguk falls a step or two in front of them. He doesn’t get far.
“Oi—Romeo!”
He doesn’t stop. That’s his first mistake.
“What was that?” Taehyung calls, already grinning, falling into step beside him. “You actually having a conversation?”
“Didn’t think he knew how,” Carter adds from behind.
Jeongguk exhales lightly through his nose, not slowing his pace. “I do when it’s worth it.”
That lands.
“Oho—“ Taehyung lets out, looking over his shoulder toward the rest of the boys behind him, whilst nudging Jeongguk. “Hear that?”
“Careful,” Mills cuts in, “he might start writing letters next.”
A small ripple of laughter breaks out.
Jeongguk shakes his head once, slightly at that, but there’s something there now, something just off his usual rhythm.
Taehyung catches it. Of course he does.
“…You’ve either wrote one or you’re thinking about it,” he says, quieter this time, intentionally between just them.
Jeongguk doesn’t answer.
Which is answer enough.
Taehyung grins, wider now. “God help us.”
————
The hours that follow make the office quieter than it should be, as if for every minute that passes, time takes ten-fold of it. Or maybe you brought that quiet in with you.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor as you pull yourself closer to the desk over time, papers waiting where you’d left them in the morning, untouched, unchanged.
When you notice the light that’s still peaking through the window, falling differently on the paper you’re working on, you sit up. For the first time in hours, you look up, drawn not by thought but by instinct, toward the dusty ledge of the window. And for a moment, you don’t move.
Then it passes.
There are only a few letters left.
So you lower your eyes again, just as quickly as you’d lost it, fingers finding their rhythm once more as if nothing had interrupted them at all.
Lift. Read. Redact. Sort. Place.
It comes back easily. Too easily. Ink to ink. Names to names. Lives reduced to something that can be folded, stamped and sent away.
Until, you stop.
Not because of the name. Never because of the name. Because of the way it’s written.
‘My darling,’
Your eyes move, steady at first.
‘I hope this reaches you before anything else does.’
A small crease takes place between your brows.
You’ve read this before, not these words, but this shape of them. Careful. Controlled. Missing something.
Your thumb presses lightly into the edge of the paper as you continue.
‘I have been told to keep this brief, so I will try, though you know I’ve never been very good at that.’
There’s that carefulness again, that tip-toeing around what matters.
‘Time is passing strangely here. Days feel like hours until they don’t, and then it seems weeks have gone without me noticing at all.’
Your fingers are digging into your palm now, nails carving half-moons into the skin.
‘I keep thinking of the last morning before I left, how you stood in the doorway with your hair still undone, saying something I didn’t quite catch because I was already halfway out. I’ve been trying to remember it properly, but it won’t come back the way it should.’
Your brows furrow deeper.
‘I think I assumed there would be time to ask you again.’
Your lip twitches as you try to swallow. Not noticeably, just enough.
Your eyes continue.
‘They tell us not to write much about where we are or what we’re doing. I suppose that makes sense. There are things here I wouldn’t know how to explain even if I could.’
A line break, shorter now.
‘If you don’t hear from me again, I don’t want you to think it was because I didn’t try.’
Your hand falls still, nails lift from their etched dips in your palm.
‘It only means—‘
The sentence ends there.
Not finished. Not crossed out. Just, left.
Your eyes linger on it longer than it should.
Then drops, almost reluctantly, to the final line squeezed beneath, scrawled smaller, as if added after everything else had already been decided.
‘I should have stayed a moment longer.’
Silence. Pure unfiltered silence, not in the room. In you.
Instinctively, your body mulls over with trembling softness as you move the tops of your fingers to rest at the edge of the paper once again.
Then, as careful as your body allows, you turn the page over.
Nothing.
So, your fingers naturally trace the indent that the words on the front have left, hollowed out on the back. Feeling the indentation of the words rather than reading them now.
You don’t reach for the next letter.
You sit with this one.
And you don’t know how long you sit there for, until—
a knock.
You don’t look up immediately. But another knock lands on the doorframe straight-away, lighter this time.
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken root in there,” Millie’s voice carries through, already half-amused.
You look back down at the paper in your hands, then at the small stack beside you, then at nothing in particular.
“This looks promising,” she says, stepping in without waiting. “Come on.”
You look at up at her from where she’s stood, leaning against the open doorframe. Then back at the stack.
“I still have—“
“You will always still have,” she cuts in. “That’s the problem.”
A beat.
You don’t argue. Instead, you gather what’s left into something resembling order, aligning the edges once, twice, before leaving them where they are. The only paper you set aside is the one you read last, you move it, not atop the pile, just besides it.
“Good,” Millie says, satisfied, already turning back toward the door. “I refuse to let you spend another evening reading about other people’s tragedies.”
You pause only a second longer, eyes flicking once to the letter you set aside, then you finally stand.
And follow.
───
By the time you reach the bunks, you’ve already worn yourself thin trying to convince Millie you’re tired. Tired enough to be left alone, at least for tonight.
It doesn’t take.
“You’re coming,” she says, already halfway through changing, blouse pulled over her head with little regard for the argument.
“Millie, it’s just tonight—”
“No,” she cuts in, voice muffled briefly before reappearing, sharper now. “Not tonight. No chance.”
And so, you’re here.
The bar is louder than it has any right to be.
Not polished, not orderly, just thoroughly alive. Chairs scraping, boots knocking into table legs, voices overlapping without waiting their turn. Someone laughs too loudly near the back, another voice rising over it in mock argument. Glass meets wood in uneven rhythm. The kind of noise that doesn’t demand attention, only fills the space so nothing else has to.
It feels like something just short of reckless.
“You’re late,” Adeline says immediately, though she’s smiling when she does.
“I wasn’t coming.”
“And yet,” Elsie adds, not looking up, her fingers slow around the base of her glass, turning it in small, absent circles, “here you are.”
The bench is slightly sticky beneath your palms when you steady yourself, dress swaying, the table uneven enough that your glass tilts before it settles. Elsie presses a drink into your hand before you can refuse it, her movements efficient, practised.
You let it happen.
Three drinks in, the noise has shifted from something you’re aware of, to something that presses at the edges of everything.
Not overwhelming. Just inescapable.
From across the room, it’s worse.
“What are we doing, gentlemen— what is this?” Taehyung’s tipsy voice cuts through the noise, one hand thrown out toward the table like he’s presenting a spectacle that’s far grander than it is.
“It’s called entertainment, Tex,” Carter shoots back, not looking up from where he’s lining up a dart with far too much concentration.
“It’s called missing, Cart,” Mills adds, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve been ‘lining that up’ for the last five minutes.”
“I’m calculating.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Same thing.”
A small burst of laughter follows.
Then, Jeongguk pushes forward through them.
“Move,” he says, not forceful, just loud enough to be obeyed.
“Here he is,” Evan mutters. “Good God.”
“Gentlemen,” Jeongguk announces, dragging a hand through his hair, already half-smiling like he knows exactly how this ends, “you’re embarrassing yourselves.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Taehyung says, stepping aside just enough.
You don’t realise you’ve gone still until Adeline’s elbow brushes yours.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she murmurs.
“Do what?”
“That,” she says, glancing past you. “Whatever that is.”
You try looking away, to the girls, to your drink, you truly do. But the room doesn’t quite let you.
Jeongguk grabs an apple off the table.
Turns it once in his hand.
Then, with zero hesitation,
“Whoo!”
It’s loud. Sharp. Completely unnecessary.
The room reacts anyway.
“Sit down—sit down, you idiot—” Cart starts. Too late.
Jeongguk’s already stepping back, planting himself against the wall, tossing the apple once before setting it in place, on-top of his head.
“You miss Cart,” he says, pointing lazily at Carter with two fingers, “I’ll make sure you’re at the back of any formation for the next two months.”
Jeongguks hand is large enough to cover his whole face when it comes up. The only movement being where he separates his pointer finger and middle finger, a make-shift peephole for his eyes.
“Jeon—” Taehyung starts, laughing now, already knowing this is going badly.
“Relax, Tex,” Jeongguk cuts in, easy, cocky. “You worry too much.”
“Take the shot!” someone shouts from behind.
Carter exhales sharply. Throws the dart.
Your fingers twitch once around your glass.
Thunk.
The apple splits. Half of it drops. The other barely shifts.
The table erupts.
Jeongguk pushes himself off the wall, looking down at the apple like it personally offended him.
He’s there, yes, in the familiar yellow sheepskin jacket, but it’s not like before.
He isn’t contained in a moment or a conversation. Not something you can place neatly into memory. He’s louder. Looser. Surrounded.
He steps forward like he belongs there and the room shifts to accommodate him. Sharp. Unrestrained.
Mumbles of the conversation hit your ears in paused moments.
You catch the “Bit off,” you catch the laughter. Easy and effortless—
“Bit off?” Mills repeats. “You’re still alive.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that’s off.” Taehyung adds on, laughing.
“Alright, who’s next?” Evans calls.
“Not him,” Taehyung says immediately. “He’s had enough.”
“I’ve had exactly enough,” Jeongguk corrects, already reaching for someone’s drink that isn’t his.
“That’s not yours—”
“Mhm.” he hums as best he can with his head tipped back.
It doesn’t match anything you’ve seen of him before. Not the train. Not the corridor. This is different.
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath after the drink, something close to a laugh, rubbing briefly at the back of his neck as the moment dissolves into something else, another story, another voice, another shift in the room.
It moves quickly. It always does.
Because you’re still watching, you also catch the girl approaching him.
Someone steps into his space and he lets them.
A girl, familiar enough in the way most faces here become. She’s smiling before she speaks, already leaning in like she expects to be let closer.
“You’re insane.” She blinks up at him, not over-dramatically, just with quiet intention, certain.
“I’ve heard worse.”
“You could’ve been hurt.”
He glances at her then.
Not dismissive. Not interested.
Just enough to answer.
“I wasn’t.”
She stays anyway. They usually do.
It doesn’t require much from him, just the right responses, spaced out enough to pass as attention. A nod here. A word there. Nothing that asks him to give more than he intends to.
Her hand brushes his sleeve.
From where you stand, it looks like he leans down to hear her better.
You look away, too quickly, then back.
He shifts, barely noticeable. Not pulling away. Just not staying where she expects him to be.
The conversation carries on around them, changing shape without asking permission.
Your hands grip glass so tight, the condensation trickles up and over the path of your fingers, as if reluctant to break up the moment.
From the opposite side of the room, it also looks like something.
But, Taehyung notices first. Of course he does.
He watches the interaction for exactly two seconds before muttering to Mills, “He’s not even listening.”
Mills glances over.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Back with Jeongguk, the girl’s still talking. Still trying. Still leaning in.
He nods once.
Another half-second too late.
“Right,” he says.
Wrong response. Doesn’t matter.
Her hand lingers, but he shifts. Not obvious. Just enough.
Taehyung smirks.
“There it is.”
“Jeon!” Cart calls out again. “You flirtin’ or surviving over there?”
Jeongguk doesn’t look at him.
“Multitasking.”
“Poorly!”
“Better than you throw.” Jeongguk says, a mumble more to himself and the boys closest in distance to him.
But the room reacts again, laughter, shouting, noise folding over itself.
“Come on,” Millie says, tugging lightly at your sleeve. “If you’re going to pretend you’re not interested, at least do it closer.”
“I’m not—“ you begin.
But you let her pull you a few steps further in.
And somewhere in it, he looks up.
And then, something catches in his eyes. Not a sound. Not a name.
Just, movement. He looks up. Not necessarily searching, neither expecting to find anything.
And there you are.
Across the room.
It throws something off, only slightly.
“—Jeon?” He looks down. The girl, still there, still talking.
He hadn’t caught a word.
“You look busy.”
A beat.
“Something like that.”
“You want a drink?” she offers after momentary silence.
He looks past her again
It takes a second. Not to recognise you, but to place you here.
In this.
In the noise, the light, the movement.
Not in a train compartment or a corridor halfway between somewhere and somewhere else.
Not in memory.
Everything else stays loud. But that moment caught by Jeongguk, doesn’t.
“…Maybe later,” he says.
It’s not a yes. She takes it like one anyway, but he’s already half-turned.
───
In a sense, you see it before it happens. The shift, the ease of it.
She steps in close. Too close.
‘You’re insane.’
You look away, your finger twitching at the thought, mind lagging behind your body.
It looks easy, that’s the worst part.
Like it requires nothing from him, like it happens often.
Adeline watches you now instead of him.
“Oh, this is excellent,” she mutters.
“Don’t.” Elsie nudges her.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
He nods at something the girl says. Late. Slightly off.
You notice. You don’t know why you notice.
Her hand rests against his arm. He shifts. Barely.
Your gaze lingers a second longer.
“…he’s not even listening,” someone says near him.
You don’t hear who. You don’t need to.
You look down at your drink, at the pleats in your dress, at anything.
Then, back up.
And this time, he’s looking at you.
Not by accident.
The noise doesn’t stop. Nothing changes.
But the moment, holds.
No smile. No gesture.
Just, recognition. Again.
Then, someone pulls him away “Jeon, you’re up again—“
The moment breaks. Just like that. The room rushes back in.
He doesn't look for you again. Doesn't need to. He already knows where you are. And somehow, that's worse, for him or for you, you don’t know.
You don’t realise, not at first, that you’re still looking at the space he left behind. As if something of him is still there. As if looking long enough would profess him again, a minute longer than these fleeting moments. This time with that same loose version of him from tonight.
Adeline leans in immediately.
“Careful,” Adeline murmurs from behind your shoulder, as she joins you appearing from nowhere. “They’re contagious.”
You don’t look at her.
“Who?”
She tilts her chin slightly, you don’t follow it.
“Pilots,” she says.
Millie laughs. “Too late for that.”
“Stop, A.” you say, shaking your head faintly, though there’s no real weight behind it.
“Jeon’s worst than most,” Adeline adds, almost thoughtfully.
That, you don’t react to.
“Is he?” Millie asks, far too interested.
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “The kind that knows it.”
Noise swells back in, quick to cover what just was. The night carries on, and by the time you leave, the cooler and quieter air feels unfamiliar.
The door swings shut behind you, cutting the noise in half, though it still spills faintly into the night, laughter trailing after you like something unfinished.
“It’s freezing,” Elsie mutters, teeth already grinding, she pulls her coat tighter around herself.
“It’s refreshing,” Millie corrects.
“It’s cold,” Elsie repeats.
Adeline says nothing at first. She just looks at you.
You feel it brush over you.
“What?” you ask, adjusting your sleeve, though there’s nothing wrong with it.
“Nothing,” she says.
A beat.
“Absolutely nothing.”
Millie snorts. “That’s worse.”
You glance between them. “I don’t know what you think you’ve seen—”
“Oh, we haven’t seen anything,” Adeline cuts in lightly.
Elsie hums. “Not a thing.”
Millie nods, far too eager. “No, no. Completely uneventful evening.”
You let out a small breath, something between a laugh and disbelief.
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” Adeline says, stepping down off the curb, “you came out anyway.”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“Mm,” Elsie cuts in, a quiet sound, but pointed.
You stop walking for half a second.
Just enough for them to notice.
“Oh, this is excellent,” Millie murmurs, looping her arm through yours before you can move ahead of them. “She’s thinking about it.”
“I’m not thinking about anything.”
“Dangerous,” Adeline says.
“For who?” you shoot back.
All three of them exchange a look.
“For you,” Elsie says simply.
You scoff softly, though it doesn’t quite land.
“That’s dramatic.”
“Is it?” Adeline tilts her head slightly. “Because from where I was standing—”
“Please, you were standing too far away to make any kind of observation, A.”
“I was standing exactly where I needed to be.”
Millie laughs under her breath. “You didn’t even blink,” she adds.
At that, you falter.
“I’m sorry, what?” you say, nose and eyebrows scrunched in slight confusion.
“Not once,” Elsie says.
“That’s not even possible.”
“It is when you’re staring,” Adeline replies.
“I wasn’t staring.”
They all look at you again.
You sigh.
“Even if I was,” you say, a touch sharper now, “Is there a problem?”
“Of course not,” Millie agrees immediately.
Too quickly.
“Nothing ever is a problem,” Elsie adds.
Adeline smiles, slow and knowing.
“Especially not Lieutenants who put apples on their heads in crowded bars.”
That, you don’t respond to, finding no worth in debating the notion.
You just keep walking.
They let you. For a few steps.
Then—
“So,” Millie says, lighter now, like she’s moved on, but if you look close enough at the twitch in her chin, you’ll find she hasn’t moved on. “are we going back tomorrow?”
You glance at her.
“No.”
A beat.
“…probably not.” you add, eyes downcast.
Three quiet smiles pass between them.
You don’t see them.
Instead, you focus on the last few steps toward the building, closing the distance with quiet intent, like it might settle something if you just keep moving.
Inside, heels tap against the floorboards, coats are shrugged off, the room reshapes itself around your return with practiced ease. It doesn’t take long for all of you to fall back into routine.
Millie’s already tossing her scarf somewhere it won’t stay. Elsie bends at the edge of her bed, slipping off her shoes with a quiet exhale. Adeline crosses to the window, pushing it shut with a firm hand like it had any business being open at all.
Then, “Oh, girls. Post.”
It isn’t announced like it matters. It always is. The room shifts anyways. Not dramatically, just an unmarked awareness.
Adeline is already halfway across the room before the rest of you properly look up.
“Oh, don’t pretend you weren’t waiting,” she says, reaching for the small stack before it’s fully handed over.
“I wasn’t,” Elsie replies, not moving from her bed.
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were reorganising your things.”
“I like things organised.”
“You only like things organised when you’re avoiding something.”
A quiet laugh moves through the room.
“Go on then,” someone says from behind you. “Let’s have it.”
Adeline flips through the envelopes like she’s dealing cards.
“Alright, let’s see who’s loved today.”
“Adeline—”
“Obviously.”
“That was quick.”
“I’m efficient.”
She doesn’t open it immediately, just holds it and smiles at it with a new-found fondness.
“From who?” Elsie asks, finally looking up.
Adeline tilts the envelope slightly, as if considering whether to answer.
“Oh, thank God,” Millie says immediately, snatching it from the pile. “If I’d gone another day without hearing from him, I might’ve had to develop a personality.”
“You should try that anyway,” someone mutters.
Millie ignores it, already opening her letter, scanning it too quickly to be taking anything in.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
“He’s alive.”
“Romantic.”
“That’s enough.”
A pause.
Then, “He says he misses me.”
Adeline softens, just slightly. “That’s better.”
The cards are shuffled through again.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
The same rhythm, different tone.
“Anyone got anything interesting?” Adeline asks, tearing her envelope open now.
“Yes,” Elsie says dryly. “Three pages about rationing.”
“Thrilling.”
“I like him.”
“You would.”
“Who’s that from?” someone asks Millie, leaning over.
That’s not how it works here. It leans in, just slightly.
Your eyes find the first lines.
I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.
You don’t react, nor do you finish reading the letter. Not properly.
But, Elsie sees it. Of course she does.
“Well?” Adeline asks.
You fold the letter once.
Carefully.
Too quickly.
“It’s nothing.”
A pause, truly deeper this time.
Then, “Read it again,” Elsie says, not unkindly.
You glance at her.
“I’ve read it.”
“Mm,” Adeline hums. “And yet.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.
“Late evening lipstick,” she adds lightly. “I knew it.”
You don’t understand the reference.
You don’t ask.
Across the room, Millie says something, light, bright enough to catch if you wanted to, followed by a small spill of laughter that lifts and fades just as easily. Elsie answers in her quieter way, something dry, something precise, and it lands the same, softer this time. It drifts.
The room settles back into its small habits, fabric shifting, hands moving, the quiet rhythm of things being folded, set down, picked up again. Familiar motions, half-seen, half-heard.
You register it.
The shape of it. The sound, but it doesn’t quite reach you.
Because the letter rests unfolded in your hands and you’re looking at it, again.
As though the rest of the room has slipped a step behind and this, this single page, has taken its place.
You shift where you sit.
Not fully, just enough that your knee presses into the edge of the bedframe, grounding, though you don’t register the contact until a dull pressure settles there. Your shoulders draw in a fraction, instinctive, protective, like you’ve been caught in something you don’t yet understand.
‘I’ve been told I don’t take advice well, so this is new for me.
Turns out, there was a point, I won’t admit that twice.’
A small shift in the ink, like he paused.
‘I suppose that makes this unnecessary.
But I had a quiet moment, which doesnt happen often here, and it felt like a waste not to use it.’
A pause.
‘Have you seen Thorpe Abbotts at sunset?’
Your lips part, just barely, like you’re about to say something, though there’s no one to say it to. The breath that follows is shallow, uneven in a way you don’t quite correct, and it leaves you through your nose instead, quieter than it should be.
‘It’s quieter then. There’s a stretch past the hangars where the light catches the field properly.
Does a better job of it than any light ever could.’
There’s a faint pull between your brows now, not dramatic, not sharp, just a small, persistent tension that refuses to ease. It lingers even when your eyes move on, as though your expression hasn’t quite caught up with your thoughts.
Your thumb drags once along the margin of the page. A slow movement. Absent. You don’t feel the texture of it, only the motion.
You tilt the paper slightly, angling it toward the light without thinking, like clarity might come from seeing it differently. It doesn’t. The last line remains exactly as it is, steady, unchanged, offering nothing more than they already have.
The final words don’t hold anything unclear, that’s not the problem.
Still, something in your chest misplaces itself reading over them.
Your fingers shift their hold, loosening now, though not enough to let the paper fall. You don’t fold it. Don’t move to set it aside.
You just hold it. Still.
And for a moment, longer than you’d care to admit, you don’t think about the room, or the girls, or the sound of anything beyond your own breathing.
Only the letter. The lines at the bottom of the page.
And the quiet, unsteady awareness that you should put it down,
and don’t.
‘If you’re there tomorrow, you’ll find me.
If not, I suppose that answers that.
—J.’
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
Between the quiet routines of war and your sudden relocation to a different base, there are days that pass without shape or meaning, folding into one another so quietly they barely seem to exist at all, amidst that and the things left unsaid, something small, almost forgettable, settles somewhere it shouldn’t, without permission.
pairings: pilot!jjk x fem!postal-clerk!reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O2 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 5.6k
average reading time - 28 minutes
─── [💌] i really hope you guys enjoy this chapter in all its rigidity, i’m encouraging you to read this chapter slowly, i fear it may pass as quick-paced if read any other way, and i hope what you take away from this is; to not let hesitation rule you, make those decisions today, do it tomorrow or in a month, but do it. also fear not, the next chapter will have more interaction wink wink, more detail on the atmosphere instead of ‘describing’, i hope you guys like the boyish charm of the soldiers and the girlhood between the girls. take a moment to breathe before the next piece, chapter 03 - coming out 30th of April/1st of May. i’ve seen all the comments on reblogs, i couldn’t tell you just how much i appreciate you and your thoughts. please feel free to say absolutely anything. back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O2 - IN INK AND IN PASSING.
Part I
Time did not pass in a way that felt worth marking.
It moves as most things do now, without ceremony, without pause, measured not in days, but in small repetitions. Names sorted. Letters folded. Faces that become familiar without ever being truly known. The kind of passing that does not ask to be remembered, and so, for the most part, it isn’t.
And just like that, the moment on the train becomes something distant enough to ignore, but close enough not to forget.
The transfer came without explanation.
A change in numbers, a shift in need, someone elsewhere required replacing, and you were, for reasons not given, the most convenient answer. There wasn’t much of a protest. There was never much point in it. Movement was expected. Adjustment, assumed.
The journey itself is unremarkable.
Another train. A different destination. No-one worth noticing.
And yet, stepping down onto the new platform, there was something immediately distinct in the air of Thorpe Abbotts, not heavier, not harsher, just much sharper. The base doesn’t seem like a place that waits for things to happen, instead already in motion by the time you arrive.
Thorpe Abbotts is another worn, war-scarred post on the edge of a small English town, the kind of place that seems to exist only because it has to. It houses the pilots of the war and the vast airfield that stretches beyond it like a world of its own.
Engines in the distance, constant and low, something alive beneath the hard shell of the B-17 bombers. Here, voices cut cleaner through the air, less crowded and a lot more purposeful. Movement all around that suggests direction rather than delay.
The men here do not linger.
They cross spaces quickly, speak in shorter exchanges, stand with less uncertainty. Even at rest, there’s a sense that they’re only borrowing the moment.
You notice it without meaning to.
Not as something revolutionary or striking, just different enough to settle somewhere at the edge of a thought.
That’s when the worn reconnaissance car shudders to a halt outside a low, squared-of building, its engine idling a moment too long before cutting out. The journey across the base has been short, but unsteady; the kind of constant rattling that settles somewhere beneath the skin rather than passing through it. Metal vibrates against metal and every turn is taken a fraction too sharply, as though the road itself isn’t entirely trusted.
You step down from it with more awareness than necessary, fingers still curled faintly from where they’re braced against your skirts, as if the motion of the car might begin again without warning.
For a moment, the quiet feels unfamiliar.
Then, the engine ticks once, cooling. And everything resumes.
You’re at the dorms.
The rooms are smaller than you expected. Or perhaps it was the number of them, that makes them feel that way. Beds arranged in careful rows, belongings kept close, as though anything left far from reach might be lost without warning.
They’re there when you arrive.
Not necessarily waiting, just present.
A woman looks up briefly, offering a small nod, then, she returns to what she’d been doing; folding something that doesn’t need folding.
Another speaks without introduction.
“You’re the new one.”
It isn’t a question, more a statement that earns a few more observing eyes on you.
“Yes, I am.” You purse your lips at the end, a habit in the face of awkwardness.
A pause. One that gives the illusion of the conversation being over. Eyes fall back down, not necessarily uninterested, more an unintentional gesture on their behalf.
Then, simply… “Right.”
That proves enough.
For a moment, no-one moves.
You step further into the room, the weight of your bag settling heavier against your shoulder the longer you hold it there. You shift it down carefully, not dropping it, just lowering it with a kind of quiet intention, onto the narrow bed nearest the wall. The frame gives slightly under the added weight, a dull creak that feels louder than it should.
No one comments.
You unfasten the clasp, fingers working slower than usual, not out of uncertainty but awareness. Of being new. Of being watched, even when no one is looking directly.
Fabric first, folded, though less neatly than when you packed it. You smooth one piece absentmindedly before placing it down, as if the act itself matters.
From across the room, “You won’t need half of that.”
You glance up, hand still hovering over the garment.
It’s the one who had spoken earlier, still where she was, though now leaning back slightly on her hands, watching in a way that isn’t unkind, just knowing.
“You’ll see,” she adds, with a small lift of her shoulders, an intentional half-shrug.
You nod once. Not quite agreement, not quite dismissal.
Another girl shifts on the bed beside her, glancing over briefly before returning to what she’s holding, a letter, you realise, already half-open, her thumb resting beneath the fold like she’s deciding whether or not to continue.
“You’ve been moved from where?” she asks, not looking up.
You tell her.
A small pause follows. Not heavy, just noted.
“Hm, long way,” she murmurs.
You don’t respond, not like the moment called for it after that.
You continue unpacking. Shoes placed beneath the bed, a brush set carefully along the narrow ledge by the wall. Small things given places they don’t quite belong to yet.
It feels less like settling in and more like arranging something temporary to appear otherwise.
And after a while, you hear the room begin to shift, soft shuffles of movement, the click-clack of heels against the floorboards, the quiet snap of lipstick cases opening and closing. Girls move and leave the room with practised ease, gathering what they need, murmuring softly between themselves about the day ahead. Some speak of patients they’re due to attend to, others of routine tasks that fill the hours and a few, quieter still, of nothing in particular at all.
It’s then when you feel a hand on the bottom your bent elbow, a small caress. “Don’t mind her,” the girl says. When you look up, her blonde curls are shaking slightly as she nods her head in humoured disapproval. “She thinks everywhere is temporary.”
A beat.
“I don’t blame her.” comes the reply, just as evenly, not in sadness, not even in disappointment.
A faint breath of something, almost a laugh, almost not, passes through the room, then fades just as quickly.
“Well, I’m hoping you come to like Thorpe Abbotts.” She says, a small pursed smile on her lips as she walks off.
You close your bag, hands resting briefly against the tattered leather before you let them fall. There’s nothing else to unpack.
And so the days that follow, unravel without ceremony. You begin to notice the quiet patterns of it all, the way everyone exists within the same space, including you. Living alongside one another, rather than with one another. Close enough to notice, not close enough to ask.
Never about the girls who return late into the night, carrying with them the faint trace of certain pilots, something in their step just slightly lighter than before. Never about the giddy smiles that linger too long, or the flush that settles high on their cheeks after evenings spent somewhere louder, warmer, easier to forget.
Never about the patients wheeled out of the infirmary beneath sheets drawn too carefully, the fabric shifting just enough to catch against the dirt below, as if even in stillness, something refuses to fully settle.
And never about the quiet that follows.
The kind that seeps into the room later, when the lights are low and the others believe themselves unnoticed, soft, uneven breaths beneath blankets pulled just a little too high, the faintest sound of tears held back rather than let go.
It is never spoken of.
It isn’t meant to be.
There was a rhythm to it, unspoken but immensely understood.
One of the girls spoke too often, filling the space with stories that don’t quite land, laughter that comes seconds too early. Others rarely spoke at all, but they listen in a way that suggests they hear more than what is said in the moment. You think it’s because you’ve worked with paper long enough, heard the earthy scratches of paper-on-paper, one-too-many times, that you take notice to the girls’ habits with letters; Adeline keeps letters tucked beneath her pillow, even those not directly addressed to her, as though proximity alone might give them meaning, whilst Elsie refuses to read names aloud when sorting, passing envelopes along without ever letting them linger too long in her hands.
No one questions these things. It is easier not to.
Then, as it does in every base, the work settles quickly. It always does.
Paper has a way of demanding attention. Stacks arrive in uneven bundles, some tied neatly with frayed brown string, others barely held together, paper scrawny and ripped. Names written by careful hands, hurried scrawls, ink pressed too hard into thin pages, as if urgency might carry it further.
You learn the patterns of Thorpe Abbotts without trying. Who writes often. Who never does. Who sends letters too long, too full, as though afraid of what silence might imply. And who writes only what is necessary, nothing more, nothing less.
Some are careful, knowing that people like you read it over, searching for information, redacting it and in a sense, cutting one-too-many words off of their lifeline-like letters. Most place every word as though it may be their last. Others rush themselves, sentences collapsing into one another, thoughts unfinished but to be sent away nevertheless.
‘I am well.
Rosie, don’t worry yourself sick, like you always do, if you don’t hear from me…
It’s colder than I expected.’
None of them say what they truly think but all of the letters mean something anyway.
You always think of how letters were not meant to be read. Not really. They were written to be held, to exist somewhere outside the body, where fear and longing could be placed without having to carry them alone.
It isn’t the words that stay with you, it’s the restraint of them. The careful avoidance of what matters most. People write as though honesty requires permission, as though to feel something isn’t enough of a punishment to be able to profess their emotions into reality.
You think of the train only once during the months since. And even then, not in full. Not the compartment, not the way the light had shifted, not the exact shape of his face. Just, a voice. Somewhere between careless and certain.
‘Not much point.’
It feels out of place here. Almost incorrect.
And so again, the days fall by, not quickly, not slowly, just enough to blur, just enough that if you were to think back on it, the outline of the days would fizzle into the backlog of other instances where life moved mundanely.
Engines come and go. Names are marked, crossed and repeated. You and the girls move around one another with a growing, but all-the-same, quiet familiarity.
And still, everything returns to paper. To ink. To the small deliberate act of saying something without ever saying enough.
At Thorpe Abbotts, there’s a point in the evening where everything begins to quiet, though not entirely. It isn’t silence, never silence, but something softer, the kind that settles slowly with the last rays of the sunset, unnoticed at first, until the room feels different without anything having changed. The others remain around you, each occupied in their own way, pages turning, fabric shifting beneath careful hands, the faint pause of breath before a thought is allowed too far. No one speaks unless they have to.
The work, however, does not follow that same instinct. It stays, measured in paper. In ink. In the steady repetition of inked hands that have learned not to linger longer than necessary.
You sit with what remains of today. Not much now. A smaller stack. Manageable. The kind that suggests an end, even if there isn’t one. Your fingers move without thought; lift, read, redact and place. Names pass through your hands in the same quiet rhythm they always have. Familiar in all its unfamiliarity. Each one belonging somewhere beyond you and yet, for a moment resting here.
Then, something falters.
Not enough to name, certainly not enough for anyone in the room to notice.
Just the slight stillness in your hands and the initial unfocused energy in your eyes, the fact you hold the paper a second longer than you should.
You turn the envelope. Look at it properly. And nothing about it is unusual, not the ink, not the shape, not the way the name is written. It just carries with it something you cannot immediately place.
Not recognition, not entirely. Just… a feeling. As though you’ve seen it before, some place where it does not belong on paper.
Your thumb rests against the edge. You read the name once.
Then again, slower this time.
Jeon Jeongguk
The name does not arrive with clarity. There’s no sudden understanding, no sharp recollection that settles cleanly in place.
Only something faint, a shift. Like remembering something not as it was, but as it felt.
Your brows draw together, just slightly, more instinct than thought, before easing again, as if the feeling itself resists being held too closely, as if your body knows.
A voice again, perhaps. Flashes of a yellow sheepskin jacket.
‘Not much point.’
Your lips press together faintly, not quite a reaction, just the quietest acknowledgment of something unsettled.
Your fingers, adorned with their fair share of hangnails and paper-cuts, tighten briefly against the paper, then loosen just as quickly, as though the moment has been noticed and dismissed all at once.
You do not let yourself linger. You set it down, atop the other pile. Reach for the next. Continue.
But something has already moved.
After five letters, you find yourself returning to it, not with intention, not quite. Just a glance at first, then another. The name sitting where you left it, unchanged, as though it hasn’t already unnerved something small and quiet in you.
It should mean nothing. It’s just a name. One among hundreds, at that. And yet, you do not move it along.
For a moment, precisely a fraction of a moment, you do nothing at all.
Then—
PART II
The day did not end so much as it returned.
You hear the engines before you see them, low at first, then a building, distant vibration that soars through the clouds. Men begin to half-jog to the control tower, faces pulling into an early grimace.
The formation comes in, uneven. That’s the first thing anyone notices.
Not the number of bombers, never the number. That came later. It’s the spacing. The sky holds gaps where it shouldn’t.
“That’s not full formation.”
“No, Jesus, it’s not.” A fist slams on the rails.
“They’re late.”
“They’re always late when something’s wrong.”
A pause.
“Boys I need all eyes up, you see Harris’ ship?”
“…No.”
“Christ.”
“Hold—there. Tail end. That’s one of ours.”
“That’s not Harris.”
“…yeah, I know.”
“Go, go, go. Get to the boys, quick.”
Boots hit the ground before the engines had fully died. Crewmen, grease-stained, sleeves rolled, movements quick and practiced, are already jumping off the jeeps and moving towards the fighter jets, towards propellers that haven’t slowed yet. They don’t wait. They never do.
Hands run along coloured metal like they’re checking for a pulse. Panels open. Voices overlap. Someone shouts for tools that are already being carried over.
No one asks ‘how was it?’. That wasn’t done here, not in Thorpe Abbotts, a place where everyone understands the blessing of merely being alive after a mission.
A bag plummets from the hatch of an aircraft. Jeongguk climbs down last.
Not out of importance, just how it happens.
Boots meet the ground, steady enough. His hand lingers briefly on the side of the aircraft, his finger dipping into stray bullet holes, not sentimentality, something closer to acknowledgement. Then, he steps away, already unfastening what he doesn’t need anymore.
Around him, others are doing the same. Helmets off, Sweat-lined gloves pull free. Faces exposed again, though not entirely.
They don’t speak, not to each-other, not to anyone.
It isn’t silence in the way people imagine silence. It isn’t heavy or reverent. It’s procedural.
They aren’t taken in to rest. No talking. Not yet. Not until everything was said properly and in order, to someone whose job it was to turn memory into record.
What they’d seen. What they hadn’t. What hadn’t come back.
They’re led inside. Same room. Same routine.
Chairs arranged without comfort. A table that had seen too many hands resting on it for the same reason.
A heavily uniformed man was already seated, pen ready, expression unchanged from whatever it had been the day before.
A small shot glass of hard liquor is pushed in front of each man. Not generous. Most definitely not ceremonial. They say it helps. It doesn’t matter if it does. Their adrenaline anchors enough with the liquid, that administrating a shot after each mission has become routine.
“Alright,” someone says. No raised voice. No urgency. Just the start of it.
Jeongguk leans back slightly in his chair, legs splayed open and his calloused fingers loosely wrap around the glass, untouched for the moment.
He doesn’t think about the flight in the way people expect. Not all at once.
It comes in fragments. A wing too close to flying shrapnel. A moment of sky where something had been, then wasn’t. The brief, sharp bloom of something breaking apart in the distance.
“How many did you see go down, Lieutenant?” A question that always arrives first, no sugarcoating, never.
It lands without weight. It had been asked too many times to carry any.
Jeongguk lifts the glass then, takes the shot with a tipped head, not necessarily for the effect, not even for the comfort. Just because it’s there.
“Two,” he says, a rough rasp adorning his voice.
A pause.
“Maybe three.”
The man across from him nods, writes it down and looks back up, pen still lodged on the paper, no commentary or reaction follows.
“Parachutes?”
Jeongguk’s gaze shifts, not unfocused, just elsewhere for a second.
Then back.
“One.”
Another note.
That’s how it goes, piece by piece. Not emotion. Not story. Just fact, stripped down until it can be written cleanly.
By the time they’re dismissed, it’s already settling into something ordinary. Chairs scrape the floors, Jeongguks co-pilot for this mission, Taehyung, finishes off his shot, another pilot stands too quickly, steadying himself with a quiet exhale that no one comments on.
Outside, the air still feels the same. Which is always the strangest part, that something can be given so wholeheartedly to the sky and yet, it returns nothing of it. No trace. No weight. Just the same stretch of air, like the sky has already forgotten what it was asked to hold.
“Three, my ass,” one of the guys mutters as they step out, not looking at anyone in particular.
“Two and a half,” another replies.
A small unhumorous laugh follows. Not loud, not forced.
Jeongguk doesn’t join in, but the corner of his mouth shifts slightly and that’s enough to count.
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By the time they reach the bunks, the day has already begun to lose its edges. The noise of the base has softened into something looser, he thinks, less structured. A few of them had stopped briefly, just long enough for a drink that isn’t really about the drink itself. Voices continue to blend into the low hum of something almost resembling normality.
It hadn’t lasted. It never did.
At the bar, there had been a girl, one of the nurses perhaps, leaning too close, her laughter lingering a second longer than necessary, the faint trace of something as careless as a lipstick mark left behind, at the edge of his collar. Not deliberate, though not entirely unwelcome either.
But not kept.
In all, it had been enough for him to leave, to wrap up the day.
By the time he steps back onto the bunks, the stain is already half-gone, nothing more than a smudged suggestion, easily missed unless you were looking for it.
No one says anything at first, then—
“Would you just take a look at that,” someone mutters, not bothering to hide the grin in his voice.
Another glances up, catching it quicker. “Didn’t take you long, Jeon.”
Jeongguk exhales faintly through his nose, brushing the rouge mark on his white collar away with the back of his hand, like it’s nothing worth carrying.
“Can’t say I noticed,” Jeongguk says, mainly unbothered, though slight annoyance brims on his tongue at the implications.
“You never do.” comes the reply.
A quiet ripple of amusement moves through the room, easy, familiar and boyish.
Then, “Post came in,” a voice calls from somewhere near the far end.
Some boys sat up straighter, not rushing but a small shared sentiment of anticipation fleets around. A small stack was passed along, hand to hand, names are called out without much care for who caught them.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
Then—
“Jeon.”
Jeongguk glances up, caught so off-guard, his expression of mild shock slow to follow.
The envelope was tossed his way without ceremony. He caught it easily, more out of reflex than intention.
“Didn’t think you had people,” someone says, stretching out across the bed opposite.
“Didn’t think I did either,” another adds.
A quiet snort from one of them followed.
Jeongguk turns the envelope over once in his hands. No familiar handwriting. No name he recognises.
“Secret admirer,” someone offers.
“Must be desperate.”
Giddy half-laughs encompass the room.
“Or blind.”
More scattered laughs. Nothing too sharp. Nothing lingering.
“I mean, if you don’t want it Jeon, I’ll be more than happy to take it from you and read it. Need to see exactly which one of the women it is this time.”
Taehyungs hearty laughter at the comments wind down, his voice smoothing over the collective laughter, “Alright, Alright, leave him be boys.” He says, an amused smirk still evident on his lips.
Jeongguk doesn’t open it immediately, just sets the envelope down, lets the noise around him carry on.
“Mine’s from my mother,” Hal says, not looking up. Harold was one of the newer pilots, so it was expected that he’d be opening a letter from his oh-so-concerned mother. “Three pages on socks.”
“Important subject,” another replies. “You’ve been neglecting them.”
“I’ve got one about one dog I don’t even remember owning,” Mills adds. “Apparently it misses me terribly.”
“That makes one of you,” Carter mutters.
A collective laugh moves through the room.
“Anyone get anything useful?”
“Yeah,” Evans says from the far end. “Told me not to get shot.”
“Sound advice.”
“Bit late for that, I think.”
Everyone’s immersed in their letters, attention flowing intentionally to their inked papers. Not Jeongguks closest friend, though. Not Taehyung. Never.
“Jeon, go on then,” he says after a moment. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”
“Yeah,” another adds, leaning slightly. “We’re invested now.”
Jeongguk exhales through his nose, not necessarily annoyed but not particularly interested in the notion of seeing the contents of the letter.
But he picks it up again.
“Careful,” someone mutters. “Might be bad news.”
“Or worse— someone that expects a reply from the almighty Lieutenant, Jeon Jeongguk.”
That earns a louder reaction, snorts, muffled laughter, the lot of it.
Jeongguk shakes his head slightly, more to himself than to them.
Then finally, he opens it.
The room doesn’t go silent but it shifts, just a little.
He unfolds the paper, his eyes, initially unfocused, scan the first line.
‘You said there was no point in writing.’
Something in his expression stills, not dramatically but absentmindedly.
It must’ve been enough of a change because it prompts a small “…well?” from Carter.
Jeongguk doesn’t reply straight away, reads the passage again, slower this time, allowing his eyes to catch on the dotted i’s and the curl of the longer letters. But Jeongguk doesn’t fold the letter right away, it feels undeserved, somehow, to reduce it to that. His thumb lingers briefly against the edge of the paper, not thinking about it but not entirely unaware of it either.
‘It seemed worth testing.’
A faint, almost reluctant curve touches the corner of his mouth.
“Not bad?” Someone guesses.
“Depends,” another says. “Is she pretty?”
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath, closer to a laugh than anything else.
“Bit early to tell,” he says, purely to get the boys off his back. And it does just that, satisfies them enough. Conversations shift, how they always do.
Around him, boots scratch across the wood floors, matches are struck, someone towards the back is arguing, nothing that matters.
He takes this opportunity to reach for the pen beside another’s bed. Not quickly. Not with decision. Just… reaches.
Turns it once between his fingers.
Looks back down at the letter. And—
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
i'm so sorry for tagging you guys, i just tagged the first likers and rebloggers of the post to be in the taglist, i really really hope you guys don't mind, i'll only use your names for this first taglist, after this chapter i won't, it's only purely because not many people commented, again sorry and thank you so much angels!
Between the quiet routines of war and your sudden relocation to a different base, there are days that pass without shape or meaning, folding into one another so quietly they barely seem to exist at all, amidst that and the things left unsaid, something small, almost forgettable, settles somewhere it shouldn’t, without permission.
pairings: pilot!jjk x fem!postal-clerk!reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O2 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 5.6k
average reading time - 28 minutes
─── [💌] i really hope you guys enjoy this chapter in all its rigidity, i’m encouraging you to read this chapter slowly, i fear it may pass as quick-paced if read any other way, and i hope what you take away from this is; to not let hesitation rule you, make those decisions today, do it tomorrow or in a month, but do it. also fear not, the next chapter will have more interaction wink wink, more detail on the atmosphere instead of ‘describing’, i hope you guys like the boyish charm of the soldiers and the girlhood between the girls. take a moment to breathe before the next piece, chapter 03 - coming out 30th of April/1st of May. i’ve seen all the comments on reblogs, i couldn’t tell you just how much i appreciate you and your thoughts. please feel free to say absolutely anything. back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O2 - IN INK AND IN PASSING.
Part I
Time did not pass in a way that felt worth marking.
It moves as most things do now, without ceremony, without pause, measured not in days, but in small repetitions. Names sorted. Letters folded. Faces that become familiar without ever being truly known. The kind of passing that does not ask to be remembered, and so, for the most part, it isn’t.
And just like that, the moment on the train becomes something distant enough to ignore, but close enough not to forget.
The transfer came without explanation.
A change in numbers, a shift in need, someone elsewhere required replacing, and you were, for reasons not given, the most convenient answer. There wasn’t much of a protest. There was never much point in it. Movement was expected. Adjustment, assumed.
The journey itself is unremarkable.
Another train. A different destination. No-one worth noticing.
And yet, stepping down onto the new platform, there was something immediately distinct in the air of Thorpe Abbotts, not heavier, not harsher, just much sharper. The base doesn’t seem like a place that waits for things to happen, instead already in motion by the time you arrive.
Thorpe Abbotts is another worn, war-scarred post on the edge of a small English town, the kind of place that seems to exist only because it has to. It houses the pilots of the war and the vast airfield that stretches beyond it like a world of its own.
Engines in the distance, constant and low, something alive beneath the hard shell of the B-17 bombers. Here, voices cut cleaner through the air, less crowded and a lot more purposeful. Movement all around that suggests direction rather than delay.
The men here do not linger.
They cross spaces quickly, speak in shorter exchanges, stand with less uncertainty. Even at rest, there’s a sense that they’re only borrowing the moment.
You notice it without meaning to.
Not as something revolutionary or striking, just different enough to settle somewhere at the edge of a thought.
That’s when the worn reconnaissance car shudders to a halt outside a low, squared-of building, its engine idling a moment too long before cutting out. The journey across the base has been short, but unsteady; the kind of constant rattling that settles somewhere beneath the skin rather than passing through it. Metal vibrates against metal and every turn is taken a fraction too sharply, as though the road itself isn’t entirely trusted.
You step down from it with more awareness than necessary, fingers still curled faintly from where they’re braced against your skirts, as if the motion of the car might begin again without warning.
For a moment, the quiet feels unfamiliar.
Then, the engine ticks once, cooling. And everything resumes.
You’re at the dorms.
The rooms are smaller than you expected. Or perhaps it was the number of them, that makes them feel that way. Beds arranged in careful rows, belongings kept close, as though anything left far from reach might be lost without warning.
They’re there when you arrive.
Not necessarily waiting, just present.
A woman looks up briefly, offering a small nod, then, she returns to what she’d been doing; folding something that doesn’t need folding.
Another speaks without introduction.
“You’re the new one.”
It isn’t a question, more a statement that earns a few more observing eyes on you.
“Yes, I am.” You purse your lips at the end, a habit in the face of awkwardness.
A pause. One that gives the illusion of the conversation being over. Eyes fall back down, not necessarily uninterested, more an unintentional gesture on their behalf.
Then, simply… “Right.”
That proves enough.
For a moment, no-one moves.
You step further into the room, the weight of your bag settling heavier against your shoulder the longer you hold it there. You shift it down carefully, not dropping it, just lowering it with a kind of quiet intention, onto the narrow bed nearest the wall. The frame gives slightly under the added weight, a dull creak that feels louder than it should.
No one comments.
You unfasten the clasp, fingers working slower than usual, not out of uncertainty but awareness. Of being new. Of being watched, even when no one is looking directly.
Fabric first, folded, though less neatly than when you packed it. You smooth one piece absentmindedly before placing it down, as if the act itself matters.
From across the room, “You won’t need half of that.”
You glance up, hand still hovering over the garment.
It’s the one who had spoken earlier, still where she was, though now leaning back slightly on her hands, watching in a way that isn’t unkind, just knowing.
“You’ll see,” she adds, with a small lift of her shoulders, an intentional half-shrug.
You nod once. Not quite agreement, not quite dismissal.
Another girl shifts on the bed beside her, glancing over briefly before returning to what she’s holding, a letter, you realise, already half-open, her thumb resting beneath the fold like she’s deciding whether or not to continue.
“You’ve been moved from where?” she asks, not looking up.
You tell her.
A small pause follows. Not heavy, just noted.
“Hm, long way,” she murmurs.
You don’t respond, not like the moment called for it after that.
You continue unpacking. Shoes placed beneath the bed, a brush set carefully along the narrow ledge by the wall. Small things given places they don’t quite belong to yet.
It feels less like settling in and more like arranging something temporary to appear otherwise.
And after a while, you hear the room begin to shift, soft shuffles of movement, the click-clack of heels against the floorboards, the quiet snap of lipstick cases opening and closing. Girls move and leave the room with practised ease, gathering what they need, murmuring softly between themselves about the day ahead. Some speak of patients they’re due to attend to, others of routine tasks that fill the hours and a few, quieter still, of nothing in particular at all.
It’s then when you feel a hand on the bottom your bent elbow, a small caress. “Don’t mind her,” the girl says. When you look up, her blonde curls are shaking slightly as she nods her head in humoured disapproval. “She thinks everywhere is temporary.”
A beat.
“I don’t blame her.” comes the reply, just as evenly, not in sadness, not even in disappointment.
A faint breath of something, almost a laugh, almost not, passes through the room, then fades just as quickly.
“Well, I’m hoping you come to like Thorpe Abbotts.” She says, a small pursed smile on her lips as she walks off.
You close your bag, hands resting briefly against the tattered leather before you let them fall. There’s nothing else to unpack.
And so the days that follow, unravel without ceremony. You begin to notice the quiet patterns of it all, the way everyone exists within the same space, including you. Living alongside one another, rather than with one another. Close enough to notice, not close enough to ask.
Never about the girls who return late into the night, carrying with them the faint trace of certain pilots, something in their step just slightly lighter than before. Never about the giddy smiles that linger too long, or the flush that settles high on their cheeks after evenings spent somewhere louder, warmer, easier to forget.
Never about the patients wheeled out of the infirmary beneath sheets drawn too carefully, the fabric shifting just enough to catch against the dirt below, as if even in stillness, something refuses to fully settle.
And never about the quiet that follows.
The kind that seeps into the room later, when the lights are low and the others believe themselves unnoticed, soft, uneven breaths beneath blankets pulled just a little too high, the faintest sound of tears held back rather than let go.
It is never spoken of.
It isn’t meant to be.
There was a rhythm to it, unspoken but immensely understood.
One of the girls spoke too often, filling the space with stories that don’t quite land, laughter that comes seconds too early. Others rarely spoke at all, but they listen in a way that suggests they hear more than what is said in the moment. You think it’s because you’ve worked with paper long enough, heard the earthy scratches of paper-on-paper, one-too-many times, that you take notice to the girls’ habits with letters; Adeline keeps letters tucked beneath her pillow, even those not directly addressed to her, as though proximity alone might give them meaning, whilst Elsie refuses to read names aloud when sorting, passing envelopes along without ever letting them linger too long in her hands.
No one questions these things. It is easier not to.
Then, as it does in every base, the work settles quickly. It always does.
Paper has a way of demanding attention. Stacks arrive in uneven bundles, some tied neatly with frayed brown string, others barely held together, paper scrawny and ripped. Names written by careful hands, hurried scrawls, ink pressed too hard into thin pages, as if urgency might carry it further.
You learn the patterns of Thorpe Abbotts without trying. Who writes often. Who never does. Who sends letters too long, too full, as though afraid of what silence might imply. And who writes only what is necessary, nothing more, nothing less.
Some are careful, knowing that people like you read it over, searching for information, redacting it and in a sense, cutting one-too-many words off of their lifeline-like letters. Most place every word as though it may be their last. Others rush themselves, sentences collapsing into one another, thoughts unfinished but to be sent away nevertheless.
‘I am well.
Rosie, don’t worry yourself sick, like you always do, if you don’t hear from me…
It’s colder than I expected.’
None of them say what they truly think but all of the letters mean something anyway.
You always think of how letters were not meant to be read. Not really. They were written to be held, to exist somewhere outside the body, where fear and longing could be placed without having to carry them alone.
It isn’t the words that stay with you, it’s the restraint of them. The careful avoidance of what matters most. People write as though honesty requires permission, as though to feel something isn’t enough of a punishment to be able to profess their emotions into reality.
You think of the train only once during the months since. And even then, not in full. Not the compartment, not the way the light had shifted, not the exact shape of his face. Just, a voice. Somewhere between careless and certain.
‘Not much point.’
It feels out of place here. Almost incorrect.
And so again, the days fall by, not quickly, not slowly, just enough to blur, just enough that if you were to think back on it, the outline of the days would fizzle into the backlog of other instances where life moved mundanely.
Engines come and go. Names are marked, crossed and repeated. You and the girls move around one another with a growing, but all-the-same, quiet familiarity.
And still, everything returns to paper. To ink. To the small deliberate act of saying something without ever saying enough.
At Thorpe Abbotts, there’s a point in the evening where everything begins to quiet, though not entirely. It isn’t silence, never silence, but something softer, the kind that settles slowly with the last rays of the sunset, unnoticed at first, until the room feels different without anything having changed. The others remain around you, each occupied in their own way, pages turning, fabric shifting beneath careful hands, the faint pause of breath before a thought is allowed too far. No one speaks unless they have to.
The work, however, does not follow that same instinct. It stays, measured in paper. In ink. In the steady repetition of inked hands that have learned not to linger longer than necessary.
You sit with what remains of today. Not much now. A smaller stack. Manageable. The kind that suggests an end, even if there isn’t one. Your fingers move without thought; lift, read, redact and place. Names pass through your hands in the same quiet rhythm they always have. Familiar in all its unfamiliarity. Each one belonging somewhere beyond you and yet, for a moment resting here.
Then, something falters.
Not enough to name, certainly not enough for anyone in the room to notice.
Just the slight stillness in your hands and the initial unfocused energy in your eyes, the fact you hold the paper a second longer than you should.
You turn the envelope. Look at it properly. And nothing about it is unusual, not the ink, not the shape, not the way the name is written. It just carries with it something you cannot immediately place.
Not recognition, not entirely. Just… a feeling. As though you’ve seen it before, some place where it does not belong on paper.
Your thumb rests against the edge. You read the name once.
Then again, slower this time.
Jeon Jeongguk
The name does not arrive with clarity. There’s no sudden understanding, no sharp recollection that settles cleanly in place.
Only something faint, a shift. Like remembering something not as it was, but as it felt.
Your brows draw together, just slightly, more instinct than thought, before easing again, as if the feeling itself resists being held too closely, as if your body knows.
A voice again, perhaps. Flashes of a yellow sheepskin jacket.
‘Not much point.’
Your lips press together faintly, not quite a reaction, just the quietest acknowledgment of something unsettled.
Your fingers, adorned with their fair share of hangnails and paper-cuts, tighten briefly against the paper, then loosen just as quickly, as though the moment has been noticed and dismissed all at once.
You do not let yourself linger. You set it down, atop the other pile. Reach for the next. Continue.
But something has already moved.
After five letters, you find yourself returning to it, not with intention, not quite. Just a glance at first, then another. The name sitting where you left it, unchanged, as though it hasn’t already unnerved something small and quiet in you.
It should mean nothing. It’s just a name. One among hundreds, at that. And yet, you do not move it along.
For a moment, precisely a fraction of a moment, you do nothing at all.
Then—
PART II
The day did not end so much as it returned.
You hear the engines before you see them, low at first, then a building, distant vibration that soars through the clouds. Men begin to half-jog to the control tower, faces pulling into an early grimace.
The formation comes in, uneven. That’s the first thing anyone notices.
Not the number of bombers, never the number. That came later. It’s the spacing. The sky holds gaps where it shouldn’t.
“That’s not full formation.”
“No, Jesus, it’s not.” A fist slams on the rails.
“They’re late.”
“They’re always late when something’s wrong.”
A pause.
“Boys I need all eyes up, you see Harris’ ship?”
“…No.”
“Christ.”
“Hold—there. Tail end. That’s one of ours.”
“That’s not Harris.”
“…yeah, I know.”
“Go, go, go. Get to the boys, quick.”
Boots hit the ground before the engines had fully died. Crewmen, grease-stained, sleeves rolled, movements quick and practiced, are already jumping off the jeeps and moving towards the fighter jets, towards propellers that haven’t slowed yet. They don’t wait. They never do.
Hands run along coloured metal like they’re checking for a pulse. Panels open. Voices overlap. Someone shouts for tools that are already being carried over.
No one asks ‘how was it?’. That wasn’t done here, not in Thorpe Abbotts, a place where everyone understands the blessing of merely being alive after a mission.
A bag plummets from the hatch of an aircraft. Jeongguk climbs down last.
Not out of importance, just how it happens.
Boots meet the ground, steady enough. His hand lingers briefly on the side of the aircraft, his finger dipping into stray bullet holes, not sentimentality, something closer to acknowledgement. Then, he steps away, already unfastening what he doesn’t need anymore.
Around him, others are doing the same. Helmets off, Sweat-lined gloves pull free. Faces exposed again, though not entirely.
They don’t speak, not to each-other, not to anyone.
It isn’t silence in the way people imagine silence. It isn’t heavy or reverent. It’s procedural.
They aren’t taken in to rest. No talking. Not yet. Not until everything was said properly and in order, to someone whose job it was to turn memory into record.
What they’d seen. What they hadn’t. What hadn’t come back.
They’re led inside. Same room. Same routine.
Chairs arranged without comfort. A table that had seen too many hands resting on it for the same reason.
A heavily uniformed man was already seated, pen ready, expression unchanged from whatever it had been the day before.
A small shot glass of hard liquor is pushed in front of each man. Not generous. Most definitely not ceremonial. They say it helps. It doesn’t matter if it does. Their adrenaline anchors enough with the liquid, that administrating a shot after each mission has become routine.
“Alright,” someone says. No raised voice. No urgency. Just the start of it.
Jeongguk leans back slightly in his chair, legs splayed open and his calloused fingers loosely wrap around the glass, untouched for the moment.
He doesn’t think about the flight in the way people expect. Not all at once.
It comes in fragments. A wing too close to flying shrapnel. A moment of sky where something had been, then wasn’t. The brief, sharp bloom of something breaking apart in the distance.
“How many did you see go down, Lieutenant?” A question that always arrives first, no sugarcoating, never.
It lands without weight. It had been asked too many times to carry any.
Jeongguk lifts the glass then, takes the shot with a tipped head, not necessarily for the effect, not even for the comfort. Just because it’s there.
“Two,” he says, a rough rasp adorning his voice.
A pause.
“Maybe three.”
The man across from him nods, writes it down and looks back up, pen still lodged on the paper, no commentary or reaction follows.
“Parachutes?”
Jeongguk’s gaze shifts, not unfocused, just elsewhere for a second.
Then back.
“One.”
Another note.
That’s how it goes, piece by piece. Not emotion. Not story. Just fact, stripped down until it can be written cleanly.
By the time they’re dismissed, it’s already settling into something ordinary. Chairs scrape the floors, Jeongguks co-pilot for this mission, Taehyung, finishes off his shot, another pilot stands too quickly, steadying himself with a quiet exhale that no one comments on.
Outside, the air still feels the same. Which is always the strangest part, that something can be given so wholeheartedly to the sky and yet, it returns nothing of it. No trace. No weight. Just the same stretch of air, like the sky has already forgotten what it was asked to hold.
“Three, my ass,” one of the guys mutters as they step out, not looking at anyone in particular.
“Two and a half,” another replies.
A small unhumorous laugh follows. Not loud, not forced.
Jeongguk doesn’t join in, but the corner of his mouth shifts slightly and that’s enough to count.
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By the time they reach the bunks, the day has already begun to lose its edges. The noise of the base has softened into something looser, he thinks, less structured. A few of them had stopped briefly, just long enough for a drink that isn’t really about the drink itself. Voices continue to blend into the low hum of something almost resembling normality.
It hadn’t lasted. It never did.
At the bar, there had been a girl, one of the nurses perhaps, leaning too close, her laughter lingering a second longer than necessary, the faint trace of something as careless as a lipstick mark left behind, at the edge of his collar. Not deliberate, though not entirely unwelcome either.
But not kept.
In all, it had been enough for him to leave, to wrap up the day.
By the time he steps back onto the bunks, the stain is already half-gone, nothing more than a smudged suggestion, easily missed unless you were looking for it.
No one says anything at first, then—
“Would you just take a look at that,” someone mutters, not bothering to hide the grin in his voice.
Another glances up, catching it quicker. “Didn’t take you long, Jeon.”
Jeongguk exhales faintly through his nose, brushing the rouge mark on his white collar away with the back of his hand, like it’s nothing worth carrying.
“Can’t say I noticed,” Jeongguk says, mainly unbothered, though slight annoyance brims on his tongue at the implications.
“You never do.” comes the reply.
A quiet ripple of amusement moves through the room, easy, familiar and boyish.
Then, “Post came in,” a voice calls from somewhere near the far end.
Some boys sat up straighter, not rushing but a small shared sentiment of anticipation fleets around. A small stack was passed along, hand to hand, names are called out without much care for who caught them.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
Then—
“Jeon.”
Jeongguk glances up, caught so off-guard, his expression of mild shock slow to follow.
The envelope was tossed his way without ceremony. He caught it easily, more out of reflex than intention.
“Didn’t think you had people,” someone says, stretching out across the bed opposite.
“Didn’t think I did either,” another adds.
A quiet snort from one of them followed.
Jeongguk turns the envelope over once in his hands. No familiar handwriting. No name he recognises.
“Secret admirer,” someone offers.
“Must be desperate.”
Giddy half-laughs encompass the room.
“Or blind.”
More scattered laughs. Nothing too sharp. Nothing lingering.
“I mean, if you don’t want it Jeon, I’ll be more than happy to take it from you and read it. Need to see exactly which one of the women it is this time.”
Taehyungs hearty laughter at the comments wind down, his voice smoothing over the collective laughter, “Alright, Alright, leave him be boys.” He says, an amused smirk still evident on his lips.
Jeongguk doesn’t open it immediately, just sets the envelope down, lets the noise around him carry on.
“Mine’s from my mother,” Hal says, not looking up. Harold was one of the newer pilots, so it was expected that he’d be opening a letter from his oh-so-concerned mother. “Three pages on socks.”
“Important subject,” another replies. “You’ve been neglecting them.”
“I’ve got one about one dog I don’t even remember owning,” Mills adds. “Apparently it misses me terribly.”
“That makes one of you,” Carter mutters.
A collective laugh moves through the room.
“Anyone get anything useful?”
“Yeah,” Evans says from the far end. “Told me not to get shot.”
“Sound advice.”
“Bit late for that, I think.”
Everyone’s immersed in their letters, attention flowing intentionally to their inked papers. Not Jeongguks closest friend, though. Not Taehyung. Never.
“Jeon, go on then,” he says after a moment. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”
“Yeah,” another adds, leaning slightly. “We’re invested now.”
Jeongguk exhales through his nose, not necessarily annoyed but not particularly interested in the notion of seeing the contents of the letter.
But he picks it up again.
“Careful,” someone mutters. “Might be bad news.”
“Or worse— someone that expects a reply from the almighty Lieutenant, Jeon Jeongguk.”
That earns a louder reaction, snorts, muffled laughter, the lot of it.
Jeongguk shakes his head slightly, more to himself than to them.
Then finally, he opens it.
The room doesn’t go silent but it shifts, just a little.
He unfolds the paper, his eyes, initially unfocused, scan the first line.
‘You said there was no point in writing.’
Something in his expression stills, not dramatically but absentmindedly.
It must’ve been enough of a change because it prompts a small “…well?” from Carter.
Jeongguk doesn’t reply straight away, reads the passage again, slower this time, allowing his eyes to catch on the dotted i’s and the curl of the longer letters. But Jeongguk doesn’t fold the letter right away, it feels undeserved, somehow, to reduce it to that. His thumb lingers briefly against the edge of the paper, not thinking about it but not entirely unaware of it either.
‘It seemed worth testing.’
A faint, almost reluctant curve touches the corner of his mouth.
“Not bad?” Someone guesses.
“Depends,” another says. “Is she pretty?”
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath, closer to a laugh than anything else.
“Bit early to tell,” he says, purely to get the boys off his back. And it does just that, satisfies them enough. Conversations shift, how they always do.
Around him, boots scratch across the wood floors, matches are struck, someone towards the back is arguing, nothing that matters.
He takes this opportunity to reach for the pen beside another’s bed. Not quickly. Not with decision. Just… reaches.
Turns it once between his fingers.
Looks back down at the letter. And—
────────────────────────
this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
i'm so sorry for tagging you guys, i just tagged the first likers of the post to be in the taglist, i really really hope you guys don't mind, i'll only use your names for this first taglist, after this chapter i won't, it's only purely because not many people commented, again sorry and thank you so much angels!
Between the quiet routines of war and your sudden relocation to a different base, there are days that pass without shape or meaning, folding into one another so quietly they barely seem to exist at all, amidst that and the things left unsaid, something small, almost forgettable, settles somewhere it shouldn’t, without permission.
pairings: pilot!jjk x fem!postal-clerk!reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!ikk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O2 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 5.6k
average reading time - 28 minutes
─── [💌] i really hope you guys enjoy this chapter in all its rigidity, i’m encouraging you to read this chapter slowly, i fear it may pass as quick-paced if read any other way, and i hope what you take away from this is; to not let hesitation rule you, make those decisions today, do it tomorrow or in a month, but do it. also fear not, the next chapter will have more interaction wink wink, more detail on the atmosphere instead of ‘describing’, i hope you guys like the boyish charm of the soldiers and the girlhood between the girls. NEXT CHAPTER IS MY FAVOURITE ROM-COM-LIKE SCENES. take a moment to breathe before the next piece, chapter 03 - coming out 2nd of May. i’ve seen all the comments on reblogs, i couldn’t tell you just how much i appreciate you and your thoughts. please feel free to say absolutely anything. back to our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O2 - IN INK AND IN PASSING.
Part I
Time did not pass in a way that felt worth marking.
It moves as most things do now, without ceremony, without pause, measured not in days, but in small repetitions. Names sorted. Letters folded. Faces that become familiar without ever being truly known. The kind of passing that does not ask to be remembered, and so, for the most part, it isn’t.
And just like that, the moment on the train becomes something distant enough to ignore, but close enough not to forget.
The transfer came without explanation.
A change in numbers, a shift in need, someone elsewhere required replacing, and you were, for reasons not given, the most convenient answer. There wasn’t much of a protest. There was never much point in it. Movement was expected. Adjustment, assumed.
The journey itself is unremarkable.
Another train. A different destination. No-one worth noticing.
And yet, stepping down onto the new platform, there was something immediately distinct in the air of Thorpe Abbotts, not heavier, not harsher, just much sharper. The base doesn’t seem like a place that waits for things to happen, instead already in motion by the time you arrive.
Thorpe Abbotts is another worn, war-scarred post on the edge of a small English town, the kind of place that seems to exist only because it has to. It houses the pilots of the war and the vast airfield that stretches beyond it like a world of its own.
Engines in the distance, constant and low, something alive beneath the hard shell of the B-17 bombers. Here, voices cut cleaner through the air, less crowded and a lot more purposeful. Movement all around that suggests direction rather than delay.
The men here do not linger.
They cross spaces quickly, speak in shorter exchanges, stand with less uncertainty. Even at rest, there’s a sense that they’re only borrowing the moment.
You notice it without meaning to.
Not as something revolutionary or striking, just different enough to settle somewhere at the edge of a thought.
That’s when the worn reconnaissance car shudders to a halt outside a low, squared-of building, its engine idling a moment too long before cutting out. The journey across the base has been short, but unsteady; the kind of constant rattling that settles somewhere beneath the skin rather than passing through it. Metal vibrates against metal and every turn is taken a fraction too sharply, as though the road itself isn’t entirely trusted.
You step down from it with more awareness than necessary, fingers still curled faintly from where they’re braced against your skirts, as if the motion of the car might begin again without warning.
For a moment, the quiet feels unfamiliar.
Then, the engine ticks once, cooling. And everything resumes.
You’re at the dorms.
The rooms are smaller than you expected. Or perhaps it was the number of them, that makes them feel that way. Beds arranged in careful rows, belongings kept close, as though anything left far from reach might be lost without warning.
They’re there when you arrive.
Not necessarily waiting, just present.
A woman looks up briefly, offering a small nod, then, she returns to what she’d been doing; folding something that doesn’t need folding.
Another speaks without introduction.
“You’re the new one.”
It isn’t a question, more a statement that earns a few more observing eyes on you.
“Yes, I am.” You purse your lips at the end, a habit in the face of awkwardness.
A pause. One that gives the illusion of the conversation being over. Eyes fall back down, not necessarily uninterested, more an unintentional gesture on their behalf.
Then, simply… “Right.”
That proves enough.
For a moment, no-one moves.
You step further into the room, the weight of your bag settling heavier against your shoulder the longer you hold it there. You shift it down carefully, not dropping it, just lowering it with a kind of quiet intention, onto the narrow bed nearest the wall. The frame gives slightly under the added weight, a dull creak that feels louder than it should.
No one comments.
You unfasten the clasp, fingers working slower than usual, not out of uncertainty but awareness. Of being new. Of being watched, even when no one is looking directly.
Fabric first, folded, though less neatly than when you packed it. You smooth one piece absentmindedly before placing it down, as if the act itself matters.
From across the room, “You won’t need half of that.”
You glance up, hand still hovering over the garment.
It’s the one who had spoken earlier, still where she was, though now leaning back slightly on her hands, watching in a way that isn’t unkind, just knowing.
“You’ll see,” she adds, with a small lift of her shoulders, an intentional half-shrug.
You nod once. Not quite agreement, not quite dismissal.
Another girl shifts on the bed beside her, glancing over briefly before returning to what she’s holding, a letter, you realise, already half-open, her thumb resting beneath the fold like she’s deciding whether or not to continue.
“You’ve been moved from where?” she asks, not looking up.
You tell her.
A small pause follows. Not heavy, just noted.
“Hm, long way,” she murmurs.
You don’t respond, not like the moment called for it after that.
You continue unpacking. Shoes placed beneath the bed, a brush set carefully along the narrow ledge by the wall. Small things given places they don’t quite belong to yet.
It feels less like settling in and more like arranging something temporary to appear otherwise.
And after a while, you hear the room begin to shift, soft shuffles of movement, the click-clack of heels against the floorboards, the quiet snap of lipstick cases opening and closing. Girls move and leave the room with practised ease, gathering what they need, murmuring softly between themselves about the day ahead. Some speak of patients they’re due to attend to, others of routine tasks that fill the hours and a few, quieter still, of nothing in particular at all.
It’s then when you feel a hand on the bottom your bent elbow, a small caress. “Don’t mind her,” the girl says. When you look up, her blonde curls are shaking slightly as she nods her head in humoured disapproval. “She thinks everywhere is temporary.”
A beat.
“I don’t blame her.” comes the reply, just as evenly, not in sadness, not even in disappointment.
A faint breath of something, almost a laugh, almost not, passes through the room, then fades just as quickly.
“Well, I’m hoping you come to like Thorpe Abbotts.” She says, a small pursed smile on her lips as she walks off.
You close your bag, hands resting briefly against the tattered leather before you let them fall. There’s nothing else to unpack.
And so the days that follow, unravel without ceremony. You begin to notice the quiet patterns of it all, the way everyone exists within the same space, including you. Living alongside one another, rather than with one another. Close enough to notice, not close enough to ask.
Never about the girls who return late into the night, carrying with them the faint trace of certain pilots, something in their step just slightly lighter than before. Never about the giddy smiles that linger too long, or the flush that settles high on their cheeks after evenings spent somewhere louder, warmer, easier to forget.
Never about the patients wheeled out of the infirmary beneath sheets drawn too carefully, the fabric shifting just enough to catch against the dirt below, as if even in stillness, something refuses to fully settle.
And never about the quiet that follows.
The kind that seeps into the room later, when the lights are low and the others believe themselves unnoticed, soft, uneven breaths beneath blankets pulled just a little too high, the faintest sound of tears held back rather than let go.
It is never spoken of.
It isn’t meant to be.
There was a rhythm to it, unspoken but immensely understood.
One of the girls spoke too often, filling the space with stories that don’t quite land, laughter that comes seconds too early. Others rarely spoke at all, but they listen in a way that suggests they hear more than what is said in the moment. You think it’s because you’ve worked with paper long enough, heard the earthy scratches of paper-on-paper, one-too-many times, that you take notice to the girls’ habits with letters; Adeline keeps letters tucked beneath her pillow, even those not directly addressed to her, as though proximity alone might give them meaning, whilst Elsie refuses to read names aloud when sorting, passing envelopes along without ever letting them linger too long in her hands.
No one questions these things. It is easier not to.
Then, as it does in every base, the work settles quickly. It always does.
Paper has a way of demanding attention. Stacks arrive in uneven bundles, some tied neatly with frayed brown string, others barely held together, paper scrawny and ripped. Names written by careful hands, hurried scrawls, ink pressed too hard into thin pages, as if urgency might carry it further.
You learn the patterns of Thorpe Abbotts without trying. Who writes often. Who never does. Who sends letters too long, too full, as though afraid of what silence might imply. And who writes only what is necessary, nothing more, nothing less.
Some are careful, knowing that people like you read it over, searching for information, redacting it and in a sense, cutting one-too-many words off of their lifeline-like letters. Most place every word as though it may be their last. Others rush themselves, sentences collapsing into one another, thoughts unfinished but to be sent away nevertheless.
‘I am well.
Rosie, don’t worry yourself sick, like you always do, if you don’t hear from me…
It’s colder than I expected.’
None of them say what they truly think but all of the letters mean something anyway.
You always think of how letters were not meant to be read. Not really. They were written to be held, to exist somewhere outside the body, where fear and longing could be placed without having to carry them alone.
It isn’t the words that stay with you, it’s the restraint of them. The careful avoidance of what matters most. People write as though honesty requires permission, as though to feel something isn’t enough of a punishment to be able to profess their emotions into reality.
You think of the train only once during the months since. And even then, not in full. Not the compartment, not the way the light had shifted, not the exact shape of his face. Just, a voice. Somewhere between careless and certain.
‘Not much point.’
It feels out of place here. Almost incorrect.
And so again, the days fall by, not quickly, not slowly, just enough to blur, just enough that if you were to think back on it, the outline of the days would fizzle into the backlog of other instances where life moved mundanely.
Engines come and go. Names are marked, crossed and repeated. You and the girls move around one another with a growing, but all-the-same, quiet familiarity.
And still, everything returns to paper. To ink. To the small deliberate act of saying something without ever saying enough.
At Thorpe Abbotts, there’s a point in the evening where everything begins to quiet, though not entirely. It isn’t silence, never silence, but something softer, the kind that settles slowly with the last rays of the sunset, unnoticed at first, until the room feels different without anything having changed. The others remain around you, each occupied in their own way, pages turning, fabric shifting beneath careful hands, the faint pause of breath before a thought is allowed too far. No one speaks unless they have to.
The work, however, does not follow that same instinct. It stays, measured in paper. In ink. In the steady repetition of inked hands that have learned not to linger longer than necessary.
You sit with what remains of today. Not much now. A smaller stack. Manageable. The kind that suggests an end, even if there isn’t one. Your fingers move without thought; lift, read, redact and place. Names pass through your hands in the same quiet rhythm they always have. Familiar in all its unfamiliarity. Each one belonging somewhere beyond you and yet, for a moment resting here.
Then, something falters.
Not enough to name, certainly not enough for anyone in the room to notice.
Just the slight stillness in your hands and the initial unfocused energy in your eyes, the fact you hold the paper a second longer than you should.
You turn the envelope. Look at it properly. And nothing about it is unusual, not the ink, not the shape, not the way the name is written. It just carries with it something you cannot immediately place.
Not recognition, not entirely. Just… a feeling. As though you’ve seen it before, some place where it does not belong on paper.
Your thumb rests against the edge. You read the name once.
Then again, slower this time.
Jeon Jeongguk
The name does not arrive with clarity. There’s no sudden understanding, no sharp recollection that settles cleanly in place.
Only something faint, a shift. Like remembering something not as it was, but as it felt.
Your brows draw together, just slightly, more instinct than thought, before easing again, as if the feeling itself resists being held too closely, as if your body knows.
A voice again, perhaps. Flashes of a yellow sheepskin jacket.
‘Not much point.’
Your lips press together faintly, not quite a reaction, just the quietest acknowledgment of something unsettled.
Your fingers, adorned with their fair share of hangnails and paper-cuts, tighten briefly against the paper, then loosen just as quickly, as though the moment has been noticed and dismissed all at once.
You do not let yourself linger. You set it down, atop the other pile. Reach for the next. Continue.
But something has already moved.
After five letters, you find yourself returning to it, not with intention, not quite. Just a glance at first, then another. The name sitting where you left it, unchanged, as though it hasn’t already unnerved something small and quiet in you.
It should mean nothing. It’s just a name. One among hundreds, at that. And yet, you do not move it along.
For a moment, precisely a fraction of a moment, you do nothing at all.
Then—
PART II
The day did not end so much as it returned.
You hear the engines before you see them, low at first, then a building, distant vibration that soars through the clouds. Men begin to half-jog to the control tower, faces pulling into an early grimace.
The formation comes in, uneven. That’s the first thing anyone notices.
Not the number of bombers, never the number. That came later. It’s the spacing. The sky holds gaps where it shouldn’t.
“That’s not full formation.”
“No, Jesus, it’s not.” A fist slams on the rails.
“They’re late.”
“They’re always late when something’s wrong.”
A pause.
“Boys I need all eyes up, you see Harris’ ship?”
“…No.”
“Christ.”
“Hold—there. Tail end. That’s one of ours.”
“That’s not Harris.”
“…yeah, I know.”
“Go, go, go. Get to the boys, quick.”
Boots hit the ground before the engines had fully died. Crewmen, grease-stained, sleeves rolled, movements quick and practiced, are already jumping off the jeeps and moving towards the fighter jets, towards propellers that haven’t slowed yet. They don’t wait. They never do.
Hands run along coloured metal like they’re checking for a pulse. Panels open. Voices overlap. Someone shouts for tools that are already being carried over.
No one asks ‘how was it?’. That wasn’t done here, not in Thorpe Abbotts, a place where everyone understands the blessing of merely being alive after a mission.
A bag plummets from the hatch of an aircraft. Jeongguk climbs down last.
Not out of importance, just how it happens.
Boots meet the ground, steady enough. His hand lingers briefly on the side of the aircraft, his finger dipping into stray bullet holes, not sentimentality, something closer to acknowledgement. Then, he steps away, already unfastening what he doesn’t need anymore.
Around him, others are doing the same. Helmets off, Sweat-lined gloves pull free. Faces exposed again, though not entirely.
They don’t speak, not to each-other, not to anyone.
It isn’t silence in the way people imagine silence. It isn’t heavy or reverent. It’s procedural.
They aren’t taken in to rest. No talking. Not yet. Not until everything was said properly and in order, to someone whose job it was to turn memory into record.
What they’d seen. What they hadn’t. What hadn’t come back.
They’re led inside. Same room. Same routine.
Chairs arranged without comfort. A table that had seen too many hands resting on it for the same reason.
A heavily uniformed man was already seated, pen ready, expression unchanged from whatever it had been the day before.
A small shot glass of hard liquor is pushed in front of each man. Not generous. Most definitely not ceremonial. They say it helps. It doesn’t matter if it does. Their adrenaline anchors enough with the liquid, that administrating a shot after each mission has become routine.
“Alright,” someone says. No raised voice. No urgency. Just the start of it.
Jeongguk leans back slightly in his chair, legs splayed open and his calloused fingers loosely wrap around the glass, untouched for the moment.
He doesn’t think about the flight in the way people expect. Not all at once.
It comes in fragments. A wing too close to flying shrapnel. A moment of sky where something had been, then wasn’t. The brief, sharp bloom of something breaking apart in the distance.
“How many did you see go down, Lieutenant?” A question that always arrives first, no sugarcoating, never.
It lands without weight. It had been asked too many times to carry any.
Jeongguk lifts the glass then, takes the shot with a tipped head, not necessarily for the effect, not even for the comfort. Just because it’s there.
“Two,” he says, a rough rasp adorning his voice.
A pause.
“Maybe three.”
The man across from him nods, writes it down and looks back up, pen still lodged on the paper, no commentary or reaction follows.
“Parachutes?”
Jeongguk’s gaze shifts, not unfocused, just elsewhere for a second.
Then back.
“One.”
Another note.
That’s how it goes, piece by piece. Not emotion. Not story. Just fact, stripped down until it can be written cleanly.
By the time they’re dismissed, it’s already settling into something ordinary. Chairs scrape the floors, Jeongguks co-pilot for this mission, Taehyung, finishes off his shot, another pilot stands too quickly, steadying himself with a quiet exhale that no one comments on.
Outside, the air still feels the same. Which is always the strangest part, that something can be given so wholeheartedly to the sky and yet, it returns nothing of it. No trace. No weight. Just the same stretch of air, like the sky has already forgotten what it was asked to hold.
“Three, my ass,” one of the guys mutters as they step out, not looking at anyone in particular.
“Two and a half,” another replies.
A small unhumorous laugh follows. Not loud, not forced.
Jeongguk doesn’t join in, but the corner of his mouth shifts slightly and that’s enough to count.
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By the time they reach the bunks, the day has already begun to lose its edges. The noise of the base has softened into something looser, he thinks, less structured. A few of them had stopped briefly, just long enough for a drink that isn’t really about the drink itself. Voices continue to blend into the low hum of something almost resembling normality.
It hadn’t lasted. It never did.
At the bar, there had been a girl, one of the nurses perhaps, leaning too close, her laughter lingering a second longer than necessary, the faint trace of something as careless as a lipstick mark left behind, at the edge of his collar. Not deliberate, though not entirely unwelcome either.
But not kept.
In all, it had been enough for him to leave, to wrap up the day.
By the time he steps back onto the bunks, the stain is already half-gone, nothing more than a smudged suggestion, easily missed unless you were looking for it.
No one says anything at first, then—
“Would you just take a look at that,” someone mutters, not bothering to hide the grin in his voice.
Another glances up, catching it quicker. “Didn’t take you long, Jeon.”
Jeongguk exhales faintly through his nose, brushing the rouge mark on his white collar away with the back of his hand, like it’s nothing worth carrying.
“Can’t say I noticed,” Jeongguk says, mainly unbothered, though slight annoyance brims on his tongue at the implications.
“You never do.” comes the reply.
A quiet ripple of amusement moves through the room, easy, familiar and boyish.
Then, “Post came in,” a voice calls from somewhere near the far end.
Some boys sat up straighter, not rushing but a small shared sentiment of anticipation fleets around. A small stack was passed along, hand to hand, names are called out without much care for who caught them.
“Not yours.”
“Not yours either.”
“Unlucky.”
Then—
“Jeon.”
Jeongguk glances up, caught so off-guard, his expression of mild shock slow to follow.
The envelope was tossed his way without ceremony. He caught it easily, more out of reflex than intention.
“Didn’t think you had people,” someone says, stretching out across the bed opposite.
“Didn’t think I did either,” another adds.
A quiet snort from one of them followed.
Jeongguk turns the envelope over once in his hands. No familiar handwriting. No name he recognises.
“Secret admirer,” someone offers.
“Must be desperate.”
Giddy half-laughs encompass the room.
“Or blind.”
More scattered laughs. Nothing too sharp. Nothing lingering.
“I mean, if you don’t want it Jeon, I’ll be more than happy to take it from you and read it. Need to see exactly which one of the women it is this time.”
Taehyungs hearty laughter at the comments wind down, his voice smoothing over the collective laughter, “Alright, Alright, leave him be boys.” He says, an amused smirk still evident on his lips.
Jeongguk doesn’t open it immediately, just sets the envelope down, lets the noise around him carry on.
“Mine’s from my mother,” Hal says, not looking up. Harold was one of the newer pilots, so it was expected that he’d be opening a letter from his oh-so-concerned mother. “Three pages on socks.”
“Important subject,” another replies. “You’ve been neglecting them.”
“I’ve got one about one dog I don’t even remember owning,” Mills adds. “Apparently it misses me terribly.”
“That makes one of you,” Carter mutters.
A collective laugh moves through the room.
“Anyone get anything useful?”
“Yeah,” Evans says from the far end. “Told me not to get shot.”
“Sound advice.”
“Bit late for that, I think.”
Everyone’s immersed in their letters, attention flowing intentionally to their inked papers. Not Jeongguks closest friend, though. Not Taehyung. Never.
“Jeon, go on then,” he says after a moment. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”
“Yeah,” another adds, leaning slightly. “We’re invested now.”
Jeongguk exhales through his nose, not necessarily annoyed but not particularly interested in the notion of seeing the contents of the letter.
But he picks it up again.
“Careful,” someone mutters. “Might be bad news.”
“Or worse— someone that expects a reply from the almighty Lieutenant, Jeon Jeongguk.”
That earns a louder reaction, snorts, muffled laughter, the lot of it.
Jeongguk shakes his head slightly, more to himself than to them.
Then finally, he opens it.
The room doesn’t go silent but it shifts, just a little.
He unfolds the paper, his eyes, initially unfocused, scan the first line.
‘You said there was no point in writing.’
Something in his expression stills, not dramatically but absentmindedly.
It must’ve been enough of a change because it prompts a small “…well?” from Carter.
Jeongguk doesn’t reply straight away, reads the passage again, slower this time, allowing his eyes to catch on the dotted i’s and the curl of the longer letters. But Jeongguk doesn’t fold the letter right away, it feels undeserved, somehow, to reduce it to that. His thumb lingers briefly against the edge of the paper, not thinking about it but not entirely unaware of it either.
‘It seemed worth testing.’
A faint, almost reluctant curve touches the corner of his mouth.
“Not bad?” Someone guesses.
“Depends,” another says. “Is she pretty?”
Jeongguk huffs a quiet breath, closer to a laugh than anything else.
“Bit early to tell,” he says, purely to get the boys off his back. And it does just that, satisfies them enough. Conversations shift, how they always do.
Around him, boots scratch across the wood floors, matches are struck, someone towards the back is arguing, nothing that matters.
He takes this opportunity to reach for the pen beside another’s bed. Not quickly. Not with decision. Just… reaches.
Turns it once between his fingers.
Looks back down at the letter. And—
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please reblog and comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated! much love angels!
In the spring of World War II, a single mistake places you on the wrong train, and in the path of Jeongguk, a man who doesn’t believe in things that last. What passes between you is a brief, almost inconsequential, yet it lingers in ways neither of you expect, settling quietly into a memory, where some moments, no matter how small, refuse to remain forgotten. This is the moment you’d both look back on.
pairings: pilot!jjk x fem!postal-clerk!reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!jkk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
────────────────────────
CHAPTER O1 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 4.4k
average reading time - 25 minutes
─── [💌] this chapter was written in the past tense, the next chapters won’t be, this was a sort-of ‘look back’ into the moment it all started without them knowing, i think as humans we need to narrow in on the smaller intricate parts of our day, no matter how mundane, hopefully this shows how something so frustrating in the moment, goes to be the biggest pivotal point to Jeongguk and you, hope you enjoy, this chapters only a somewhat preview, a different tense and way of writing will be used in chapter O2 - coming out 27/28th of April. our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O1 - THE FIRST TIME WE DIDN’T KNOW
Sometime in the spring of 1944.
The trouble with trains is that they rarely feel like decisions. You step onto one thinking only of the next hour, the next stop even the ordinary shape of your day that’s still yet to be. The sentiment that a single mistake could carry you elsewhere entirely, isn’t there. Later in the solemn bunks, the girls would ask where it began, as if there was a moment worth pointing to. But the truth holds that; it began quietly, with a platform you wasn’t meant to stand on and a train that didn’t wait long enough for you to change your mind.
But before that, there was the platform.
It moved in a way that felt almost restless, as though the war had even settled itself into the rhythm of places far from its destruction, into the mechanical whirring of noise that wasn’t the bombs themselves. People didn’t seem to linger unless they had to, as though even standing still carried a sense of urgency.
Women in wool skirts and fitted coats similar to yours, though differing shades, moved through the crowd, the frayed hems brushing just below their knees, practical and modest, though softened by small attempts at elegance; lipstick pressed on in a haste, curls pinned neatly beneath scarves that never quite stayed in place. Their shoes were sensible and low-heeled but the effect of war, though little, could be observed in the intricacies of the soles; tattered and sooty, from walking distances that had grown longer since things had become uncertain.
Men stood straighter. You think it’s the uniforms did that to them, sharp lines, polished buttons, collars sitting just right, as if order could be maintained in at least one part of the world, even if that meant that uniforms fit them better than roles ever would. Even the younger ones held themselves with a kind of borrowed confidence, a small tip of their head that held their overhasty posture higher than usual, the act so apparently rehearsed rather than owned.
There were embraces that lasted minutes too long; hands held too tight to be let go hastily a moment later, seconds too quick, though perhaps it was rushed enough not to give a label to the hesitation that adorned everything. As if that hesitation might make leaving impossible.
It had been to your far right, near the end of the platform, a girl was being lifted, half-laughing, half-crying as she reached up toward a carriage window, her arms thrown around the neck of a soldier leaning down to meet her. Someone had been steadying her from behind, as if this was a practised thing, as if they’d collectively learnt how to help each-other hold on just a little longer.
To your immediate left, a mother had stood nearby, not speaking and not moving exempt from the fragile wave towards a carriage with a small twitch of her deepening frown, her other hand folded too carefully in front of her, watching in that quiet, fixed way mothers did when they had their whole heart to pour out but not a single emotion to place it under. As though when stripped of her own children, being a woman or a mother no longer meant simply being oneself, but being perpetually exposed to disappointment. War did that.
Steam rolled low across the ground, voices overlapped, not loud but constant. Names called. Instructions repeated. The train had then exhaled sharply, a long metallic breath that cut through everything else, and still people lingered, almost as if by will alone the moment before departure could be stretched.
Boarding the train with an almost-hop when you had heard the last whistle, demonstrated that your error wasn’t one that announces itself.
There wasn’t a sudden realisation, no sharp turn of panic. All that followed was a gradual awareness, settling in as the train begrudgingly pulled away from the station with a steadiness that felt almost deliberate. The platform had slipped past you in small fragments, faces, luggage, the blur of movement as it is, and then it was gone, replaced by an open stretch and distance you hadn’t intended to cross.
You had checked your ticket once, then again, as if the repetition might alter the outcome. It didn’t. You were on the wrong train, going to a completely different city, a completely different base.
For a moment, a small passing moment, you had considered doing something about it, speaking to someone, asking questions, turning the mistake into something manageable or even giving yourself the chance of diminishing the harbouring embarrassment. But the thought passed just as quickly. There was something final in the way the train moved, something that had suggested interruption would feel more unreasonable than continuing on.
So you had stayed.
The carriage was much more quiet than the rumble of what had been outside the doors. A simple mundane low hum of motion, the occasional shift of weight from somewhere further down, but nothing that demanded attention. Everything gave the impression of being in-between things, not quite empty, not quite occupied, temporary in the way all transit is. Temporary in the way cold things turn hot, the way the wet dries, the parch moistens. What was once barren, blooming.
You had adjusted yourself, the simple roll of your ankle to force your foot deeper into the guarded shell of your heels, an adjusted grip on your bag, all to will your body to slowly move down the narrow aisle, to scan for an empty compartment.
Most had been taken. Not full, but claimed, coats thrown across seats, newspapers left open, just quiet signals people use to mark a space as their own. You’d passed them all without stopping, your pace unhurried to make up for the moment, not entirely sure why.
Then, you had reached the last door. It was half-closed, not quite latched.
You had paused.
Not necessarily because there was something unusual with it, only because it felt, for a moment, like a choice. A small one at that. One you could afford to make, the kind you wouldn’t quite remember making when looking back.
You had slid it open.
Inside, someone was already there.
A soldier it seemed, was stretched across the seat as though the journey itself belonged to him, one arm that was bringing up the rest of his rigid sheepskin jacket, was resting loosely over his eyes, boots scuffed in a way that suggested use rather than care. Legs splayed, as if order had seemed unnecessary at the time.
For what felt like the 5th fleeting moment, you had considered stepping back out. Finding somewhere else.
But the train had shifted beneath you, a subtle lurch forward, and the moment had passed.
So, you had stepped inside. Closed the door behind you. And took the seat opposite him. The train carried on, steady and indifferent, as if nothing of consequence had happened at all.
With a gradual lift of his arm, bringing the jacket back to its original sitting form, he looked at you, with careful steady eyes, pulled his legs into a more orderly position and then, simply put his arm back over his eyes, indifferent at best.
Then without moving, he’d said —
“Wrong train?”
You had exhaled quietly, half-heartedly almost. Something simmered between irritation and reluctant amusement.
“Is it that obvious?” You’d said with the slightest furrow in-between your brows, though nothing that stayed longer than the ending of your words.
Voice evenly deep, unhurried, as if what he says was a grand observation, not a question of the moment. “I’d like to think you know it is.”
You’d let your eyes properly set on him. Pilot perhaps, of higher rank certainly, told from the looseness of the way he occupied the space, as though the rules that had shaped most people didn’t quite settle on him the same way. His uniform was neat enough to pass inspection, but worn enough to suggest he didn’t think much of it after that.
“And you are?” You’d spurted, to save yourself of his lurking words.
Only then did he shift, slowly lowering his arm, sitting straighter even. A flicker of something passed his round eyes and landed on his lips, interest perhaps, but it settled quickly into something lighter.
“Very much meant to be here.”
A small astonished breath exhaled from your lips in the form of a pfft. “Oh of-course you are.”
The corner of his mouth had lifted faintly. A beat. “You could’ve left.”
“The train was moving.”
“Minor detail.” He said, with a slight lift of his hand, into an almost-shrug.
You’d lent back slightly, maybe even a slight tilt of your head, unimpressed. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I consider stepping off one in motion, soldier.”
That had earned a quiet breath of a laugh.
“Fair.”
The silence that followed was easier, not empty or awkward, just unfilled.
Outside, the english countryside slipped past in long blurred stretches of green and yellow, the air was still, faintly warm, carrying the dull scent of worn fabric and something metallic beneath it.
“So,” he had said after a while, shifting his attention back onto you, “what do you do? Besides board the wrong trains.”
You’d tilted your head a fraction, considering him, not the question.
You remember what you’d said lightly, “Office work,” a breath in-between. “Nothing worth reporting.”
He’d quirked his brow, a natural reaction it seemed, “That sounds suspiciously like something worth reporting.”
“It isn’t,” You’d replied “Mostly paperwork and people.”
He’d watched you a second longer, one soft blink in-between. “Ah,” Another blink. One nod of his head. “War effort, then.”
“Something like that.”
“And you?” you’d asked.
Jeongguk had leaned back, a reckless sense of calm he carried, one arm stretching along the back of the next seat.
“I fly things I probably shouldn’t.”
You had glanced at him, “Very reassuring, soldier.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
Another pause, thoughtful enough that it felt deliberate this time, like neither of you was in a hurry to leave it.
“Do you write home?” you’d asked absently.
The question had seemed to catch somewhere between you both.
Jeongguk hadn’t answered immediately, then, “Not much point.”
A bigger crease had taken form in-between your brows, you think back on all the letters you read, all the love that’s harboured in whichever England city you’re dumped in at the time, whatever base, love so deep that even in the rough boldness of it engraved in ink it professes physically.
Your reply had come almost too quickly, “There’s always a point.”
“To say what?”
“Anything, genuinely anything,” A beat. “People like knowing you’re still… somewhere.”
He gave a small, dismissive shake of his head, an almost toothy grin encompassing his lips. “If I’m still somewhere, they’ll hear about it eventually.”
“That’s not nearly the same thing.” Concern hung lightly over your face, pushing two shakes of your head as if to say no.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s simpler.”
You’d studied him for another moment. When you think back now, it’s this moment that his face, and all its possessive youthfulness had locked somewhere far into the nerves of your eyes, perhaps even constructed its own warped vessel towards your heart - not quite reached it, but somewhere where the energy from his vessel pours into an artery that carries blood into your heart, with the lasting touch from his part in it.
“You’re not panicking enough,” he added, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
“I didn’t know I should be, soldier.”
“Most people would be. A completely wrong train to a random city.”
“I’ll find my way even if it’s eventually, soldier”
That earned something more definite, a real smile this time, though it didn’t last long. Jeongguk watched you properly now, not casually, not in passing.
“Please, my name—,”
The train shifted beneath them, the rhythm changing slightly as it began to slow, neither of you had commented on it. For a moment it felt as if time had adjusted to match something quieter between you.
Then the movement came to a halt altogether.
Jeongguk watched you like he was trying to place something he couldn’t quite reach.
You had felt it, “This is where I get off.” You said after a while, clutching at your leather bag, throwing another glance at his face.
It wasn’t. He knew that. But he hadn’t called it out.
“Ofcourse it is.”
You stood, aimlessly brushing your hands twice over your jacket, an unnecessary gesture.
And for a second, it seemed like something more might’ve been said. Something that would fix the moment more in place.
You hesitated at the door, then with a small turn of your head—
“You’re wrong by the way, Jeongguk.” A look past his jacket and at the name tag ‘Jeon Jeongguk’ that had embellishments worthy of only a Lieutenant.
He’d glanced up.
“About?”
“There is a point.”
A beat.
“In writing.”
Then with a slow blink and a half-smile you turned slowly and left.
Unbeknownst to you, something in his expression had shifted, just slightly. Not enough to name. Just enough to stay. He didn’t move. Just sat there looking at the space you’d left behind.
Then, after a moment, he’d let out a quiet breath. Not quite a laugh. Not quite anything at all.
“…Writing,” he repeated under his breath.
Outside, the landscape continued on, unchanged. But the compartment felt different now. Not empty. Just marked.
There are moments that don’t feel like beginnings until long after they’ve passed. They arrive without warning, dressed as something small, a wrong turn, a misplaced ticket, a train taken without thinking. Only later do they gather meaning, reshaping themselves into something that feels almost deliberate. This was one of those moments. Though at the time, it felt like nothing at all. And though yes, cold things do turn hot, the wet does dry, the parch moistens. What is barren will bloom, even if ‘eventually’ …
but it can’t be forgotten that; what blooms will fall.
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this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated!
i’m so sorry for tagging you guys, i just tagged the first likers of the post to be in the taglist, i really really hope you guys don’t mind, i’ll only use your names for this first taglist, after this chapter i won’t, it’s only purely because not many people commented, again sorry and thank you so much angels!
In the spring of World War II, a single mistake places you on the wrong train, and in the path of Jeongguk, a man who doesn’t believe in things that last. What passes between you is a brief, almost inconsequential, yet it lingers in ways neither of you expect, settling quietly into a memory, where some moments, no matter how small, refuse to remain forgotten. This is the moment you’d both look back on.
pairings: pilot!jjk x fem!postal-clerk!reader
tags/warnings: inspired by mota, explicit combat scenes, bomber squadron!jkk, mentions of death, soldiers, mentions of alcohol consumption, set in world war Il, bombing, romcom humour, slow burn, intimate scenes/eventual smut, heavy angst, war, poetic love, miscommunication, guarded feelings, yearning, use of nicknames, intense loving, trauma, coping, emotional constipation, old love and truly deep heartfelt love, (more to be added - specified for each chapter).
features: kim taehyung.
heavily inspired by Masters of the Air
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CHAPTER O1 .𖥔 ݁ ˖
word count - 4.4k
average reading time - 25 minutes
─── [💌] this chapter was written in the past tense, the next chapters won’t be, this was a sort-of ‘look back’ into the moment it all started without them knowing, i think as humans we need to narrow in on the smaller intricate parts of our day, no matter how mundane, hopefully this shows how something so frustrating in the moment, goes to be the biggest pivotal point to Jeongguk and you, hope you enjoy, this chapters only a somewhat preview, a different tense and way of writing will be used in chapter O2 - coming out 27/28th of April. our cocky pilot!
A simple reblog or your feedback means much more than you think angels, much love xoxo
series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
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CHAPTER O1 - THE FIRST TIME WE DIDN’T KNOW
Sometime in the spring of 1944.
The trouble with trains is that they rarely feel like decisions. You step onto one thinking only of the next hour, the next stop, even the ordinary shape of your day that’s still yet to be. The sentiment that a single mistake could carry you elsewhere entirely, isn’t there. Later in the solemn bunks, the girls would ask where it began, as if there was a moment worth pointing to. But the truth holds that; it began quietly, with a platform you weren’t meant to stand on and a train that didn’t wait long enough for you to change your mind.
But before that, there was the platform.
It moved in a way that felt almost restless, as though the war had even settled itself into the rhythm of places far from its destruction, into the mechanical whirring of noise that wasn’t the bombs themselves. People didn’t seem to linger unless they had to, as though even standing still carried a sense of urgency.
Women in wool skirts and fitted coats similar to yours, though differing shades, moved through the crowd, the frayed hems brushing just below their knees, practical and modest, though softened by small attempts at elegance; lipstick pressed on in a haste, curls pinned neatly beneath scarves that never quite stayed in place. Their shoes were sensible and low-heeled but the effect of war, though little, could be observed in the intricacies of the soles; tattered and sooty, from walking distances that had grown longer since things had become uncertain.
Men stood straighter. You think it’s the uniforms did that to them, sharp lines, polished buttons, collars sitting just right, as if order could be maintained in at least one part of the world, even if that meant that uniforms fit them better than roles ever would. Even the younger ones held themselves with a kind of borrowed confidence, a small tip of their head that held their overhasty posture higher than usual, the act so apparently rehearsed rather than owned.
There were embraces that lasted minutes too long; hands held too tight to be let go hastily a moment later, seconds too quick, though perhaps it was rushed enough not to give a label to the hesitation that adorned everything. As if hesitation might make leaving impossible.
It had been to your far right, near the end of the platform, a girl was being lifted, half-laughing, half-crying as she reached up toward a carriage window, her arms thrown around the neck of a soldier leaning down to meet her. Someone had been steadying her from behind, as if this was a practised thing, as if they’d collectively learnt how to help each-other hold on just a little longer.
To your immediate left, a mother had stood nearby, not speaking and not moving exempt from the fragile wave towards a carriage with a small twitch of her deepening frown, her other hand folded too carefully in front of her, watching in that quiet, fixed way mothers did when they had their whole heart to pour out but not a single emotion to place it under. As though when stripped of her own children, being a woman or a mother no longer meant simply being oneself, but being perpetually exposed to disappointment. War does that.
Steam rolled low across the ground, voices overlapped, not loud but constant. Names called. Instructions repeated. The train had then exhaled sharply, a long metallic breath that cut through everything else, and still people lingered, almost as if by will alone the moment before departure could be stretched.
Boarding the train with an almost-hop when you had heard the last whistle, demonstrated that your error wasn’t one that announced itself.
There wasn’t a sudden realisation, no sharp turn of panic. All that followed was a gradual awareness, settling in as the train begrudgingly pulled away from the station with a steadiness that felt almost deliberate. The platform had slipped past you in small fragments, faces, luggage, the blur of movement as it is, and then it was gone, replaced by an open stretch and distance you hadn’t intended to cross.
You had checked your ticket once, then again, as if the repetition might alter the outcome. It didn’t. You were on the wrong train, going to a completely different city, a completely different base.
For a moment, a small passing moment, you had considered doing something about it, speaking to someone, asking questions, turning the mistake into something manageable or even giving yourself the chance of diminishing the harbouring embarrassment. But the thought passed just as quickly. There was something final in the way the train moved, something that had suggested interruption would feel more unreasonable than continuing on.
So you had stayed.
The carriage was much more quiet than the rumble of what had been outside the doors. A simple mundane low hum of motion, the occasional shift of weight from somewhere further down, but nothing that demanded attention. Everything gave the impression of being in-between things, not quite empty, not quite occupied, temporary in the way all transit is. Temporary in the way cold things turn hot, the way the wet dries, the parch moistens. What was once barren, blooming.
You had adjusted yourself, the simple roll of your ankle to force your foot deeper into the guarded shell of your heels, an adjusted grip on your bag, all to will your body to slowly move down the narrow aisle, to scan for an empty compartment.
Most had been taken. Not full, but claimed, coats thrown across seats, newspapers left open, just quiet signals people use to mark a space as their own. You’d passed them all without stopping, your pace unhurried to make up for the moment, not entirely sure why.
Then, you had reached the last door. It was half-closed, not quite latched.
You had paused.
Not necessarily because there was something unusual with it, only because it felt, for a moment, like a choice. A small one at that. One you could afford to make, the kind you wouldn’t quite remember making when looking back.
You had slid it open.
Inside, someone was already there.
A soldier it seemed, was stretched across the seat as though the journey itself belonged to him, one arm that was bringing up the rest of his rigid sheepskin jacket, was resting loosely over his eyes, boots scuffed in a way that suggested use rather than care. Legs splayed, as if order had seemed unnecessary at the time.
For what felt like the 5th fleeting moment, you had considered stepping back out. Finding somewhere else.
But the train had shifted beneath you, a subtle lurch forward, and the moment had passed.
So, you had stepped inside. Closed the door behind you. And took the seat opposite him. The train carried on, steady and rhythmically, as if nothing of consequence had happened at all.
With a gradual lift of his arm, bringing the jacket back to its original sitting form, he looked at you, with careful steady eyes, pulled his legs into a more orderly position and then, simply put his arm back over his eyes, indifferent at best.
Then without moving, he’d said —
“Wrong train?”
You had exhaled quietly, half-heartedly almost. Something simmered between irritation and reluctant amusement.
“Is it that obvious?” You’d said with the slightest furrow in-between your brows, though nothing that stayed longer than the ending of your words.
Voice evenly deep, unhurried, as if what he said was a grand observation, not a question of the moment. “I’d like to think you know it is.”
You’d let your eyes properly set on him. Pilot perhaps, of higher rank certainly, told from the looseness of the way he occupied the space, as though the rules that had shaped most people didn’t quite settle on him the same way. His uniform was neat enough to pass inspection, but worn enough to suggest he didn’t think much of it after that.
“And you are?” You’d spurted, to save yourself of his lurking words.
Only then did he shift, slowly lowering his arm, sitting straighter even. A flicker of something had passed his round eyes and landed on his lips, interest perhaps, but it settled quickly into something lighter.
“Very much meant to be here.”
A small astonished breath exhaled from your lips in the form of a pfft. “Oh of-course you are.”
The corner of his mouth had lifted faintly. A beat. “You could’ve left.”
“The train was moving.”
“Minor detail.” He said, with a slight lift of his hand, into an almost-shrug.
You’d lent back slightly, maybe even a slight tilt of your head, unimpressed. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I consider stepping off one in motion, soldier.”
That had earned a quiet breath of a laugh.
“Fair.”
The silence that followed was easier, not empty or awkward, just unfilled.
Outside, the english countryside slipped past in long blurred stretches of green and yellow, the air was still, faintly warm, carrying the dull scent of worn fabric and something metallic beneath it.
“So,” he had said after a while, shifting his attention back onto you, “what do you do? Besides board the wrong trains.”
You’d tilted your head a fraction, considering him, not the question.
You remembered what you’d said lightly, “Office work,” a breath in-between. “Nothing worth reporting.”
He’d quirked his brow, a natural reaction it seemed, “That sounds suspiciously like something worth reporting.”
“It isn’t,” You’d replied “Mostly paperwork and people.”
He’d watched you a second longer, one soft blink in-between. “Ah,” Another blink. One nod of his head. “War effort, then.”
“Something like that.”
“And you?” you’d asked.
He had leaned back, a reckless sense of calm he carried, one arm stretching along the back of the next seat.
“I fly things I probably shouldn’t.”
You had glanced at him, “Very reassuring, soldier.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
Another pause, thoughtful enough that it felt deliberate this time, like neither of you was in a hurry to leave it.
“Do you write home?” you’d asked absently.
The question had seemed to catch somewhere between you both.
He hadn’t answered immediately, then, “Not much point.”
A bigger crease had taken form in-between your brows, you thought back on all the letters you read, all the love that was harboured in whichever England city you’re dumped in at the time, whatever base, love so deep that even in the rough boldness of it engraved in ink, it professes physically.
Your reply had come almost too quickly, “There’s always a point.”
“To say what?”
“Anything, genuinely anything,” A beat. “People like knowing you’re still… somewhere.”
He had given a small, dismissive shake of his head, an almost toothy grin encompassing his lips. “If I’m still somewhere, they’ll hear about it eventually.”
“That’s not nearly the same thing.” Concern hung lightly over your face, pushing two shakes of your head as if to say no.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s simpler.”
You’d studied him for another moment. When you thought back, it was this moment that his face, and all its possessive youthfulness, locked itself somewhere far into the nerves of your eyes; perhaps it had even constructed its own warped vessel towards your heart—not quite reached it, but somewhere close enough that the energy of him poured into an artery that carried blood there, with the lasting touch from his part in it.
“You’re not panicking enough,” he added, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
“I didn’t know I should be, soldier.”
“Most people would be. A completely wrong train to a random city.”
“I’ll find my way even if it’s eventually, soldier”
That earned something more definite, a real smile this time, though it didn’t last long. He had watched you properly now, not casually, not in passing.
“Please, my name—,”
The train shifted beneath them, the rhythm changing slightly as it began to slow, neither of you had commented on it. For a moment it felt as if time had adjusted to match something quieter between you.
Then the movement came to a halt altogether.
He had watched you, like he was trying to place something he couldn’t quite reach.
You had felt it, “This is where I get off.” You said after a while, clutching at your leather bag, throwing another glance at his face.
It wasn’t. He knew that. But he hadn’t called it out.
“Ofcourse it is.”
You’d stood, aimlessly brushing your hands twice over your jacket, an unnecessary gesture.
And for a second, it seemed like something more might’ve been said. Something that would fix the moment more in place.
You hesitated at the door, then with a small turn of your head—
“You’re wrong by the way, Jeongguk.” A look past his jacket and at the name tag ‘Jeon Jeongguk’ with embellishments that were worthy of only a Lieutenant.
He’d glanced up.
“About?”
“There is a point.”
A beat.
“In writing.”
Then with a slow blink and a half-smile you turned slowly and left.
Unbeknownst to you, something in his expression had shifted, just slightly. Not enough to name. Just enough to stay. He didn’t move. Just sat there looking at the space you’d left behind.
Then, after a moment, he’d let out a quiet breath. Not quite a laugh. Not quite anything at all.
“…Writing,” he repeated under his breath.
Outside, the landscape continued on, unchanged. But the compartment felt different now. Not empty. Just marked.
There are moments that don’t feel like beginnings until long after they’ve passed. They arrive without warning, dressed as something small, a wrong turn, a misplaced ticket, a train taken without thinking. Only later do they gather meaning, reshaping themselves into something that feels almost deliberate. This was one of those moments. Though at the time, it felt like nothing at all. And though yes, cold things do turn hot, the wet does dry, the parch moistens. What is barren will bloom, even if ‘eventually’ …
but it can’t be forgotten that; what blooms will fall.
────────────────────────
this piece is for the yearners, you'll hopefully feel this story as if you've lived it yourself, a past-life sort-of memory, i hope it sits well with you, please comment absolutely anything, very much appreciated!
