i was going to say hazel and bucky but idk if i want jack to murder me. he's already been through so much — @shoshiwrites
TOO BAD because hazelbucky is buzzy as fuck. hazel loves a tall man and he's got curls and blue eyes to boot? whew chile... it's not fair to say that bucky falls first because he always falls first but i think he starts carrying a ring in his pocket like two weeks into knowing her. he's down bad, down horrible even. and she's not oblivious, but she thinks he's joking when he flirts with her or asks for a picture to take on flights with "for good luck." by the time she believes him when he tells her that she's the one for him, it's too late. he's flying after buck and nothing will be the same again. there are so many juicy things to explore in terms of what the stalag period would look like for them. if bucky had someone to write to, would he still be gnawing at his own leg? and i see hazel almost wasting away because the one person who could get her out of her shell is gone and she just retreats inside herself. and they have two hands so jack can tag along if he wants i guess but ooooooh i think about them a lot i must confess
send me an oc + an alternate love interest for them and i’ll tell you what i think
Summary: After a long haul international flight, Jack Kidd, uncharacteristically, misses something. Or, a conversation on the woes of photography in the Social Media Department of the Harding Administration. West Wing AU. Jack/Hazel, with the ever present nod to Jo/Bucky and Vin/Buck, though all of our favorite high level staffers make indirect appearances here. (Plus @mercurygray’s Marion, which I hope to be forgiven for — as I also hope for running away with @upontherisers’s Hazel because my brain said “them.” As always, extra thanks to @shoshiwrites for letting me put Jo (and Kay!) in Washington. And if you want to know the song Curt’s been singing all day, it’s this classic.)
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“Jack.” It’s a flat statement — his name from the doorway — the kind that usually wouldn’t draw his eyes from his computer for more than just a cursory glance that said he was listening, save for a very short list of people who deserved his full attention. That the rational part of his brain is quite certain that said list should be limited to no more than Gale, Harding himself, or, possibly, the decidedly more rare for the West Wing Vice President Clark, is of little consequence when confronted with the sound of that voice, though — “Please tell me you know you can’t publish any of the drafts you made on today’s deal.”
Jack’s eyes lock on her leaning his doorway, even while her eyes remained fixed on the phone in her hand, thumb scrolling at a speed that often led to accusations of reading without comprehension. That he finds a certain satisfaction — pleasure, even, to call it what it was (though Jack isn’t altogether prepared to take that leap — not for another eighteen months at least, anyway — a very specific date in January and one that he hopes will find him with a hand to hold on the jump) — every time he gets to listen to her summarily dismiss the accuser with an exquisitely accurate summary of whatever it was she’d been comprehending is neither here nor there. Few people are left by now, anyhow; all the usual suspects are well aware of this particular proclivity of hers.
Just the same as the other habit she’s clearly been engaging in — moving through the building without taking her eyes from whatever device happens to be in hand. Whatever navigational abilities Hazel Keene may or may not have outside of the office — outside of town, more like — has no bearing whatsoever on how easily she can skirt a disagreement in the hallway (it’s John and Jo and something about a joint press conference — routine background noise, in other words), a lower level IT staffer a beat away from breaking down and kicking the printer (given that both he and Hazel have done just that in weaker moments, Jack could hardly blame the kid — Bill? Ron? John? Name like that and God knows he’d fit right in), a law clerk come to serve papers (there’s absolutely no question whatsoever that that kid had been on the lookout all morning, wanting to avoid any possible run in with Rosenthal, who’d left the building no less than ten minutes prior), and a pair of aides with seemingly pressing counter offers running toward the conference room (literally running in spite of the fact that nothing will be decided in the next week, let alone the next two minutes — Jack would think the Chair of the House Finance Committee would know by now, nearly three years in the post, that Gale Cleven won’t be impressed by a questionable display of physical prowess and yet, their hallways have an annoying tendency to turn into something of a racetrack during negotiations, however minor they may be). To say nothing of the usual traffic outside their offices — Social Media being wedged quite snugly between the Press and Communications departments — regardless of the small hand on the clock steadily approaching six.
No one knew how to successfully divide their attention quite like his deputy. She doesn’t need to keep a list of who’s actually important enough to distract her from the task at hand. Jack’s always been impressed by that.
Envied for it, too.
“No?”
Truthfully, it’s only half a confirmatory question.
The other half — the more dominant half, maybe — is only a bid to own said attention exclusively.
“No,” Hazel confirms.
And she’d have looked at him just then — really, she would have, because she’d heard the edge of that tick in his voice, the one she’d known nearly her whole life, like when her mother or teachers or old bosses (pre Harding days, it must be said) would tell her to look at me while we’re talking and no one had ever been less direct about it, more forgiving in understanding, thus leaving her more desirous to actually do it, than Jack Kidd and, besides that, it did sound a little like John Egan trying to get their Chief to engage directly and no one really wanted that comparison laid bare before them — if she hadn’t known it was one hundred and ten percent necessary to respond to the email from Personnel Management she’d read while walking through the hall. Knowing them, they’d revoke the credentials for her new intern over the one unchecked box on her employment paperwork, then start in on her (admittedly miniscule) staff just because they were already there, before she even had a chance to fully absorb just how tired her boss undoubtedly looks if she didn’t.
“Yeah, I figured,” Jack heaves a heavy sigh, leaning back in his desk chair in a certain measure of defeat. Hazel’s eyes flick toward him briefly — enough of a glance to hurry along her reply, wholly convinced that he is exhausted. The tilt of his head into open hand, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as though he’s the owner of a fierce headache — and, truth be told, making a fully crossposted update to all of the official channels may qualify as such on its own, even on a good day — is rather a confirmation of that. “I swear it’s the best photo we got, but Harding’s eyes are half closed. You could blow up, print, frame, and hang” — his eyes are closed as he starts gesturing, an invisible frame growing larger between the not quite ninety degree angles of his thumbs and forefingers. They only open with the sound of Hazel sliding into one of the chairs across his desk, phone screen now black as can be — “ninety five percent of Wright’s thousand or more photos from a ten minute meet and greet with the Thai Prime Minister’s wife’s cousin with a promising tech start up,” — they had been oddly beautiful — “but a new trade deal with an authoritarian adjacent government offering us unprecedented access to their resources with the least painful concessions I’ve ever heard and the best we get is barely acceptable to send to your grandmother’s smart frame.”
The wave of his open hand is open to interpretation.
Hazel knows him well enough to know he’s thinking of her grandmother, specifically, with the reference — the one her mother had finally conceded needed to be moved into a home several years ago, and who, in point of fact, did own just such a smart device for the express purpose of keeping tabs on her grand-or-otherwise children — though he can’t possibly be aware of the fact that the photograph in one of the two decidedly non technological frames included in the gesture is also in said grandmother’s smart frame. Luckily, it hadn’t even happened yet the last time Harding’s schedule had afforded her — with Jack, Curt, and John Brady in tow — a moment to visit. The sight of it — her and Jack, Jo, Curt, and Bubbles Payne all a tired, thrilled to the bone mess in the early morning hours after election night 2.0 — would’ve been exceedingly difficult to get out of Curt’s memory. Her gran’s habit of asking whether she was finally with that tall man, the one whose arm’s around you in that photo (always clarified as such owing to Hazel’s likewise habitual demurring of what man’s that? as though she didn’t know), regardless of whether she’d managed one of those rare quick visits with half a fridge worth of food in hand or had only dialed a weekly (or monthly, as the case may be) check in phone call, was bad enough on its own. The last thing she needed was Curt claiming to have receipts for how much she clearly loved her coworkers.
She chooses to believe Jack means something more along the lines of I’m at my wit’s end or — probably more likely — I have given up. He can’t have meant to remind her of that distantly gnawing guilt — for the fact that her job, this dream of actually bettering life for people, keeps her from both home and family — she manages to square away quite neatly most of the time (owing in large part to the nonstop bustle of the office), as he’s never been one for deliberately making people feel bad.
Or — whatever, he’s never been one for deliberately making her feel bad, anyway.
And she seriously doubts he’s entertaining any ideas about their somewhat undefined, mutually beneficial, occasional physical relationship at the moment. They don’t talk about it. No one does, because if it’s not the best kept secret in Washington, it’s at least the best kept one in the west wing of the White House. It would be outside of town, too, if the women in her family couldn’t read her like an open book.
As it is, the reference is only a reference.
More importantly, it’s remarkably pessimistic commentary on the state of the top official White House photographer’s latest batch from the early afternoon’s deal signing. And — okay, he may have a point — there are, admittedly, some highly questionable artistic photos from a few of her cousins in gran’s frame.
Still, not to state the obvious, but —
“You don’t have to employ him if you don’t want to,” she points out, lifting the hand holding her phone in something not quite, but akin, to a point.
Jack’s head rests on his shoulder as he offers her a look for a moment. They both know that’s not going to happen — it’s not like Wright’s their only official photographer with this occasional problem, either — but that won’t stop them from hashing it out.
Talking it over, however half formed their words may come out — they understand each other, even in half phrases — works well for them.
But he’s more worn down than usual after a week in South Korea. He’d been up essentially the whole flight back, too, fielding inquiries with Harry, finalizing the details on today’s deal, editing their posting schedule to account for the changes regularly coming through on the President’s schedule. He should probably feel guilty for not following the directive in Hazel’s response to his fourth email of the early morning hours — five o’clock, to be exact — that simply read go to sleep.
But they both knew that wasn’t going to happen, either.
He sighs again.
“You know a photographer with a better pedigree and more consistency that actually wants to work directly for the government?”
Fair point. It’s not like any of them are paid particularly well — photographers, coordinators, directors. Titles hardly make a difference in this town. You either do or you don’t.
Hazel purses her lips in thought, eyes gazing upward as she leans fully into her seat, relaxed in a way that makes Jack wish that that red circled January date on his calendar were coming on quicker. Which is mostly just to say that he’d very much like to reach out and let loose the careful gathering of her braids and not just because he can see that a pair are already looser than the rest — a side effect, most likely, of the fact that she’s been here twelve hours already.
Nothing feels quite the same as her hair between his fingers.
But that’s probably just his — what? Forty hours and counting? — mind without sleep talking.
“There are a couple that might be amenable if you’re really interested,” she says, eyes drifting back toward him. The eye contact makes him remember himself and he sits up a little straighter as she murmurs an afterthought of, “If the comments they make on less public channels about their commissions in the private sector are anything to go by. But, honestly,” she pauses in a way that says here’s the point, “half the trouble you get from Wright et al is owing to where they stick them in a room. I don’t know what Red was thinking, shoving him in the corner for a deal like this.”
She’s pleasantly surprised — more pleasantly than one should be by something their organizationally charted superior does — at the huff Jack lets out at the observation. It’s not quite a laugh, but it is quite clearly what it had actually been, what with the rapid rise and fall of his brow in concert with a momentary widening of eyes and the way his lip stays quirked upward, even now.
“He was thinking that the press pool would be quick to cry foul if he ignored the rotation,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest, even as he leans forward, drops his elbows to his desk.
“That’s not a law,” she counters, her own smile brightening the room with all its familiar radiance. He’d never wanted to run Social Media, but damn if the office next to Hazel Keene isn’t the best office he’s been in since Harding took office. “But I see your point. Even if it does mean you and I have to contend with the worst angles known to man. You saw the completely unusable batch from Naples, right?”
They’d done nothing at all with them in the two weeks since their counterparts at State had forwarded them along — owing to the Deputy Chief of Staff’s attendance — after the talks. Word was that even laidback Ev Blakely, in what everyone still referred to as his new office as the Secretary of State’s Chief of Staff despite the fact that it had been half a term and change since he’d moved out of the wing, had been less than impressed by the folder, had held a closed door meeting with the photographer — not Wright, luckily or unluckily depending on one’s viewpoint — that left the more inquisitive half of his staff lingering near said door, while the anxious half did their best to stay away until the sufficiently chagrined target of his chastisement had left the building. It really wasn’t unfair, though, as half the time, one couldn’t be sure there was a member of the American delegation present in any given one of the photos at all, and the other half —
“Sure,” Jack nods, “Saved several in the Bucky’s being a pain in the ass folder — surprised you haven’t seen them.”
Jack doesn’t really believe that she’d have taken the time — needed to take the time — to look for unflattering images to annoy John back with in the last few days (he’d only just taken a moment to categorize the handful of the very doubtfully labeled usable shots during a down hour between a remembrance ceremony and a diplomatic meeting at the Korean National Assembly last Wednesday), as it takes a lot to push either Social Media Coordinator to deliberately choose to make any one of their coworkers look bad, physically or otherwise. John’s just always been better at pushing those particular buttons — a talent of sorts that’s arguably an asset for team Harding, both at home and abroad.
It’s rarely truly malicious — posting an objectively less than flattering photo — anyway, not least because the Bucky folder — not the official John Egan, Deputy Chief of Staff folder — is hidden deep in their file structure and password protected (Yankees_are_Shit!4, if only because John would be physically incapable of typing such a sentiment), to boot.
Still, Hazel laughs outright.
A breathtaking sound if there ever was one.
“See? This is why I like you, Jack. I wouldn’t trade this department for the world, exponential salary increases be damned.” She shakes her head in amusement, momentarily alighting on the phone in her lap. Unsurprisingly, she’s gotten a half dozen messages since she’d turned it off, but a quick scan is enough to say none of it’s all that pressing. Back to the topic at hand, then — “But photographer woes aside — because I do think it’s unlikely that you don’t run into a situation like this every once in a while; sometimes you just don’t get a good photo — Harding’s half baked look isn’t the issue with the post.”
Well that’s not how Jack would’ve described it.
Not before she said it, anyway.
“Okay,” he agrees, after a few clicks that say her assessment isn’t quite as outlandish as it sounds. Half may still be going a bit too far, but there is something of a life’s groovy vibe in the forever immortalized split second snap of the leader of the free world. When she doesn’t readily volunteer the issue with the post, he looks back toward her, prompting with a deliberate, “What is the issue with the post, Hazel?”
She stands, coming around the edge of his desk to look at the draft she knows he’s pulled up on his computer.
“Did you notice —“ It’s abrupt, the way she cuts herself off as she rounds the corner to stand mostly uncharacteristically — now is not the time to be thinking of how she looks in the light of the lamp on his bedside table — above him. So, too, is the way her voice turns suspicious, hand coming to rest on her hip in manifest indignation as she asks, “Do you already know what I’m gonna say? Is this a test? If this is a test —“
“How could I possibly know what you’re going to say?” He cuts in before she can get too worked up, though he may well have already missed that window — if the narrowed, dark eyes looking down on him are anything to go by. Still, he manages to halt the forthcoming argument in her parted lips with, “I’m not throwing you bones, Hazel. You made it clear years ago you weren’t interested in that.”
It may be egotistical to say, but Jack considers it one of the biggest rare missteps in his career as a civil servant, however honorable his intentions might have been. Back then, back before he’d been handed the reins of the department, he had hardly known Hazel from Adam, though — hadn’t known more than the basic fact that the attractive woman who always seemed to be running in about twelve directions all at once (clearly overwhelmed but, somehow, always with a smile) had grown more and more adamant over the first term years that social media is important. She was right about that, of course, and Jack is, even now, still somewhat ashamed of the way he’d tried to make things easier for her without talking it over first.
Not that he could ever be too upset with the outcome — their come to Jesus meeting, as it were, closed in behind that very same open door an out of breath congressional staffer runs past just now, had been swift, heated, and decisive. Softballs aren’t her forte and she doesn’t need anyone pulling punches and, though Jack had never been much of a repeat customer for any one of the bars in the area without the express purpose of meeting someone of import, he’d serendipitously wandered into Union Stage down The Wharf several hours later to find his new Deputy still as keyed from the confrontation as he was. He’d gotten his first proper taste of those usually smiling lips that night, traced the borders of her body in the dark, and they didn’t say anything at all about it the next morning, or the next, or the next, and he couldn’t say why that was.
She couldn’t, either.
What they occasionally get up to behind closed doors aside, Jack just wishes she would always trust that he saw her full capability — talent — potential — whatever she wanted to call it.
She had it all, after all.
“I’m…glad you remember,” she says, and it would be awkward if she knew how to be, but isn’t. Instead, she pivots back again, leaning toward his computer screen and — goddamn it, why does she have to be wearing a silk blouse? And why does he want to — not feel like Kidd, Sr. He focuses resolutely on the photograph in front of him, even in her subsequent explanatory interruption of herself. “I’m surprised you haven’t clocked the presence of everyone’s favorite spook — whose very publicly published schedule notably did not include any stops at the White House between an agency staff meeting and traveling to France for the international security conference with Sandra Westgate — on the left edge of your single usable snap.”
Her forefinger points along said edge, from the top of the decidedly crisp and clear CIA Director’s head to her — well, somewhere in the middle of her skirt, given the frame of the shot.
“Damn it,” he curses after a short pause that suggests the facts are sinking in, letting his head fall back against the worn leather of his high backed desk chair and squeezing his irritatingly dry eyes shut against the oncoming headache, all thought — well, most thought — of Hazel’s wardrobe choices forgotten.
She’s right about the photograph.
He’d known that the only reason it was usable was because it had been taken before the rest of the press had arrived, when hands were being shaken in preparation and the staffers whose job it was to make sure everything was just so were just finishing making everything just so. He just hadn’t realized how many faces present in the before photos weren’t in the during or after photos — though he supposes it’s something of a testament to the nation’s head spy’s talent for what she does. Still, the thing is, however much Marion Brennan’s exceedingly adept fingers might’ve played into the deal, it wasn’t something that could be openly acknowledged. For more than one reason. Not least the whole thing’s legitimacy being called into immediate question if a selective group of people in either country found out and he knew that.
Gale, John, and Jo had been drilling that into the entire administration for months now and, what’s more, he’s echoed it more than a few times, himself.
“You don’t usually miss like that.” Hazel’s voice, soft and commiserate.
She’s half sitting on his desk now, wishing she felt confident enough to close the gap between them and crossing her arms over her chest, instead. He’s definitely worse for wear today, curls wilder and freer than normal, shirt a little more rumpled than what he’d call acceptable any other day, the knot of his tie haphazardly loose at his throat, and sure, that happened after long trips to the other side of the globe, but it took a lot for Jack Kidd to be this unintentionally obtuse.
She hasn’t been able to decide, in the last month, whether it’s fortunate or unfortunate that she knows the precise reason why, owing to her unfettered access to otherwise private appointments on his calendar — namely, dinner with secretary turned stepmother number four next Friday. A wife of Kidd Senior coming to town and actually wanting to sit down with Kidd Junior surely wasn’t a good thing.
It certainly wasn’t good for Jack’s day, often turned nights and weekends, job.
“I miss plenty, Haze,” he says, head practically lolling against the headrest beneath it and Hazel can’t help being dimly aware of the sensation of eyes on her from behind. It’s terribly inconvenient, someone wanting to speak to one or the other of them just now, given the way her heart always seems to leap when he calls her that. Thankfully, whoever was in the doorway seems to recognize they’re in the middle of something and moves on as he continues the thought, “but Buck only works with the best.” Thankfully, too, he keeps his eyes closed just long enough for her to get more of a hold of herself — distantly wondering, and not for the first time, if this is how Jo’s spent the entirety of the last seven or so years — before they open with a definitive, “You know that.”
“I — yeah.” Yeah, she really has a hold of herself. She looks away, eyes alighting on his degree — degrees — framed off to her right and the overflowing, generally indiscernible to anyone not named Kidd or Keene board he uses for a visual charting of major upcoming events (though they have a digital one that she knows is easier to use — and the one time the generators had failed for all of five minutes and his review of said board had let them catch an unluckily at that moment out of date news burst from hitting the feeds in a quicker amount of time than attempting to search on a tablet was not enough to change her mind on that, thank you very much) for a moment to truly regain her composure. His eyes have drifted back to Director Brennan on his computer by the time she adds a, “You don’t have to tell me.”
He didn’t, in point of fact, because John Egan sure as hell wouldn’t let anyone forget it, though it doesn’t matter whether he does or doesn’t, because it takes all of about five minutes in Gale’s presence to know that he’s working on a different level than at least ninety percent of the population. It’s why she wasn’t at all surprised three weeks ago, when their promoting the new tax plan meeting had been derailed — before it even began — in favor of John barging in with a copy of People magazine and asking in that no one’s really sure if you’re joking or serious tone he employed so strikingly well when Gale was going to tell me we’re dating the same woman? Hazel hadn’t missed the blink and you’d miss it widening of Jo’s eyes before she’d spotted the photo of their boss laying one on the Poet Laureate in the lobby of the Kennedy Center, how it had turned into an all too familiar eye roll, though everyone else had been rather more preoccupied with Harry’s nervous laugh of he’s not serious, is he?
Lavinia Fennimore, like Gale Cleven, was on a different level altogether.
Besides, she boxes with the Chief of Staff on the regular. The impression had always been very clear — even back when he had simply been teaching her how — that anything less than her best would mean he’ll be back to the lonesome fight with the bag before she could bat her eyes. He didn’t have time for anything less.
“So no post on arguably the most successful trade negotiation in the Harding era,” Jack mutters, shaking his head back around to look at her. She twists her lips in commiseration, shifting her weight ever so slightly. “Great. Cros will be thrilled.”
There are a couple of persistent reporters in the press pool who are always overly interested in whether a full release is accompanied by a corresponding series of posts, annoyingly suspicious when it isn’t. But even if Harry gets hounded about what the Administration might be hiding — hardly different from any other day, honestly, regardless of how blatantly transparent they’re actually being — Hazel can’t really dislike them for it. It means they’re paying attention to the department’s work.
And it means they’re still controlling the narrative, even when it’s released into the unknowable void of the vast reaches of the internet.
“Cros’ll be fine, Jack,” she says, because he will be. Somehow, he always was, whatever absurd situation had to be addressed, taken charge of, talked through — or down, as the case may be — though she knows, by virtue of a New Orleans bar roughly thirteen months ago, that he lived in a state of constant surprise of his own capability. Their collective loss had been too raw a wound — have they really been without Bubbles in the press room so long? — for her to offer the sarcasm laden must be nice on her tongue then but, thankfully, Harry’s grown — still grows — into himself more and more every day. Hazel, however, can never really afford to lose confidence in herself — she lifts a hand in a hear me out gesture with, “I know major editing is out, but cropping is still an option.”
Jack fixes her with a look that’s rather benefitted by the fact that he’s below her.
“Hazel,” he starts, tone clearly indicative of the fact that this is a rehashing of a previously put to bed problem, “No one in this building — if not the whole complex — wants to incite the kind of conspiracy theory that comes from suddenly posting a photo at a different resolution than all the rest.”
They didn’t post edited photos. Period.
Which is — okay, the argument is fair enough, she has to admit, and the reason why it’s been their standard operating procedure — the Social Media department’s ROE, as it were — since Jack had taken the helm. Harding didn’t want to deal with headaches born of something said in his name on the internet. More importantly, day to day, Gale didn’t want to deal with headaches from their department, either. They had enough going on in the tangible world without having to worry why no one was responding to the DMs from the former Representative of Oregon (which Hazel had quite handily shut down as soon as it had been unceremoniously brought up in an afternoon briefing — John Brady hadn’t been thrilled by the random unexpected, demanding question). It’s why he’d put Jack in this corner in the first place and Hazel almost couldn’t ask for a better boss — it may be something of a mark against him that she rather wants to pin him down to that chair for a different sort of relief than the sleep he so clearly needs right now — but —
“Conspiracy theories are just that — theories.”
“And yet, occasionally they’re alarmingly close to the actual truth.” The statement is technically an argument still, but he already sounds defeated. Looks it, too, as he has since she entered his office, though the way his long limbs seem to sink into the leather of his chair is more pronounced now, heavy and weightless all at once. “Which is uncomfortable for everyone involved.”
Her head tilts one way, then the other, and, unsurprisingly, Jack’s brow lifts in expectancy.
“You don’t have to acknowledge it. And who’s gonna know it’s the truth when there’s nothing to confirm it? Anyway, seems like a pretty good reason to do it more often.” She shouldn’t — take advantage of his sleep deprivation to make a change to the White House’s Social ROE — but there’s a good argument in favor of the minuscule editing (that’s not really editing, anyway) when it comes to publishing information. Christ, it’s not like she’s proposing they use AI. The extra benefit of cropping for something as innocuous as someone sneezing or as potentially international incident inducing as a spook who shouldn’t be there on the edge of a photo, however — “If we’re routinely cropping for no reason at all that’ll mean no one’s at all the wiser for cropping when we actually want to…say a little less than the whole truth.”
Not telling the whole story isn’t lying. Not in this line of work.
He knows that as well as anyone.
“If you’re suggesting we —“ he cuts himself off, leaning forward and grabbing his mouse again as though physically busying himself will mean the conversation never happened. “Nevermind, I don’t want to know.”
The right edge of her lip tilts upward at his preemptive bid for plausible deniability. Both because it’s not necessary — he’d see it if he weren’t so tired, how anything that was genuinely classified would be blacked out as such in public record, the as taken shots buried beneath so many layers of security clearance she probably wouldn’t be able to see them after the fact herself, and how, more to the point, they were entitled to their say in what was labeled that way — and because it means he’s relenting.
“Come on, Jack,” she goads, eyes narrowing as she leans toward him. Just an inch more. If only because he’ll let her. “They’re all suspicious anyway. Could we really be making it any worse?”
She has a point (and he really should just accept the fact that she’s going to have a point at least, say, ninety percent of the time). The what feels like oftentimes loosely termed journalists in the press pool do have an absurd tendency to focus on all the wrong things. (Except Palmer with The Post. Maybe. Most likely. He’s heard enough one-sided conversations of Jo Brandt’s to know that her neighbor’s editors aren’t exactly the cream of the crop, either.) And, as for the general populace engaging with their posts on the regular — not including the full quarter percentage or more of bots and/or nonsensical strings of text — if they weren’t weirdly infatuated with one or another of the Administration (most often Gale or John, if not Harding himself, but, honestly — terrifyingly — they all have their admirers) or actually commenting on the content (an alarmingly small percentage), they had a habit of being rather accusatory.
So, yes. She has a point.
And her hands may still be safely tucked away, but Jack’s all too aware of her body heat with her leaning so close. As such, it probably makes him something of a coward, leaning back in his seat again — an action that consequently sees her pulling back upright, too — but he’s really too tired to actively fight against the desire to feel the smoothness of the cream colored silk of her blouse, finding it best to limit the temptation, instead.
Which is also the best excuse he has for the way he gives in so easily. It doesn’t matter that John’ll flash him an annoyingly knowing look when he concedes the floor to Hazel at their next regularly scheduled staff meeting.
“Fine,” he agrees around the fist he’s lifted with his elbow on an armrest, half to lips and half to cheek, to consider her now expectant expression. Then adjusts his hold, one finger now at his temple while his thumb braces against the juncture of his jaw, and clarifies, “But you do need approval from higher up if you seriously want to start doing that. Next full staff meeting’s at nine Monday morning — convince the Buckys, Brandt, and Crosby to at least give it a whirl on one of our smaller channels and we’ll start with the departure for Louisville that afternoon.”
That’s not much of anything, a contingent of staff loading up onto Air Force One at Andrews for a meeting with a — relatively speaking — bigwig Kentucky mayor and its governor for a tour of a new factory built with the most sizable grant from the latest infrastructure bill that — miracle of miracles — had passed through Congress last year and received its bonafide Neil B. Harding signature to much fanfare. Hence the visit.
But it’s just what Hazel’s been asking for.
“Yes, sir,” she grins. It’s quite a sight, sees Jack’s eyes leave hers as his chin meets his chest. That does finally release her arms, though her empty hand only hovers in the open space between them. “Are you really okay?”
“I’m fine, Hazel.”
“Really?” She asks, hand suddenly busy at her phone as she skims over the dozen emails she’s gotten in the last few minutes, when he looks back up. “‘Cause you don’t exactly seem like it,” comes as she fires off a quick affirmative on an availability request from Harry. It’s awfully knowing.
And what’s worse is she’s right, even if she’s not harsh enough to say it fully to his face. He does feel a little shitty and probably looks it, too. Still —
“I’m fine,” he echoes, a little firmer this time. Like maybe if he says it enough, it’ll be true. “Seoul’s just further away than I remember.”
Which isn’t untrue, owing to the fact that usually he’s not so stressed by the prospect of one of his father’s wives wanting to have a tête-à-tête that he doesn’t manage more than maybe thirty minutes of scattered shut eye on the roughly fourteen and a half hour flight. It’s usually something about inheritances, of course, but she hadn’t said and he’s only met the woman twice — in company, no less — so it really could be anything and having open ended personal matters hanging over him doesn’t —
“Want me to put together some text only on the deal?” Hazel asks, ostensibly still working on the phone in her hand, but really watching the way the distant look in his eyes resolves back to the present at the sound of her voice. She lets that hand fall, though, all pretense gone as she gently chides him with a, “Seriously, Jack, I know you know better than to let yourself pass out from exhaustion” — a la Harry Crosby circa month two as full time Press Secretary — but he’d had to learn sometime that Brady hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that sometimes you have to tell Bucky to piss off and sooner, they all agreed when Stover came back with a positive prognosis, was better than later — “but sometimes I think you forget how much better you are when you’re actually well rested. You should get out of here.” He looks up at her like he’s only just now actually seeing her. It makes her think of the searingly bright white of the new LEDs in her rather tiny kitchen, how the last time he’d been there with her he’d looked at her — eye level, lifted to the counter — from between her legs, just like that. And now is not the time for that — “Why are you looking at me like that? I mean it. You —“
“I know you do,” he interrupts. It’s incredible, really — the fact that she does. And, while technically she doesn’t have the authority to send him home, he’s also well aware of the fact that Gale would agree with her (albeit, he hopes, in something of a different way). Whatever strange magnetism that had drawn the Chief of Staff and his Deputy together had a fascinating way of pulling in all the right people besides and the drastic difference between the Harding Administration and all the offices he’d walked through with his father’s name on the door was simply astounding. It still takes him by surprise sometimes. Before she can enlist any further help — and she may have been on the way to do just that, eyeing him in a way that says she’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do next, as she rounds his desk again in a bid toward drawing him to the exit — he concedes, “And I will. Remember to run it by Coms before you post anything. And be sure the notification actually sends to Harry — the damn thing’s been getting stuck in the outbox lately and Lemmons hasn’t had a minute to see why.”
Or, more likely, Ken hasn’t had a chance to uninstall operating system updates one by one to see which had broken the function. He had significantly more important things to worry about — system patching for the new vulnerability in some service they use in their server rooms that Jack dimly remembers a flyer on.
“Sure, sure,” Hazel agrees, well aware of protocol. “Not my first rodeo, Kidd.”
Not that she can’t forgive him for it — he’s not entirely himself, after all, and pictureless posts were something of an abnormality since the completion of the minor department restructuring that had made Social its own. Or — well, their own, she supposed.
She’s fully engaged in deleting his drafts now — all the while copying over the important fragments of text — so much so that she doesn’t notice the momentary bewilderment on his face as the open draft on his computer disappears before he can shut it down. But even if he is dead on his feet — and, genuinely, he does, unfortunately, feel a bit unsteady as he stands, though that may be owing somewhat to the natural hunch needed to finish clicking restart before he reaches his full height — it only takes a glance to spy the rapid, lithe motion of her fingers over the small device in her hand for him to figure out what’s happened.
“Oh, no one would ever doubt that,” he says. It’s only a small smile adorning his features, but it’s there, nonetheless, and if it softens at the sight of Hazel being Hazel — well, that’s their own business, right? Which is to say, maybe he shouldn’t, but who can blame him from commenting as he watches that capability of hers in action? “This department wouldn’t be half a shadow of what it is without you, Hazel.”
There’s a split second where she almost lets loose the factual no, it wouldn’t that dams behind her teeth. Instead, the glance she sends his way catches on that softened smile of his. Its twin blossoms on her face.
He’s nothing but perfectly sincere.
And isn’t that something?
“Thank you,” she says, meaning it likewise. Then her expression shifts and it feels sort of mothering, her “Now go home and let me do my job,” as though she should be ushering him out his own office door with both hands. Funny how the sound alone can feel like that.
He comes around the desk himself now, grabbing his bag from the seat next to the empty one she’d occupied moments before and his coat from the coat rack tucked neatly between the planning board and a bookshelf littered with binders slam packed full of rules and regulations, handbooks, folders full of physical photo prints, pieces of legislation, memos, a stack of CDs — you name it. Every now and then, he thinks he might clean it out, but, even when he’s serious, it’s always only five minutes or less before he’s sidetracked on to something else. And just now —
He pauses next to her in all her not terribly patient patience, as she hangs back in just such a way that leaves him a direct path out the door (as though he might trick her, close the door on her as soon as she’d gone through with him still inside).
“Don’t let Biddick sidetrack you. This should’ve gone up hours ago.”
It’s not an altogether out of the blue directive — nor is it strictly uncommon, owing to Curt’s office being on the other side of hers — given that even Jack, who’s been more than a little out of it in the five and a half hours since the motorcade had delivered a half dozen of the world travelers back to the White House, hadn’t been spared the repetitive Herman’s Hermits tune on constant loop on the Deputy Communications Director’s lips the whole day long. It's better than the last time he’d had earworm stuck in his mind, to be sure (Ye Cannae Shove Yer Granny Off a Bus, owing to a mishap with speakers and a playlist for Harry’s youngest, complete with a questionable attempt at the accent of my homeland, the assertment of which had immediately received a please don’t let anyone hear you say that from his direct superior and a I can see the headline now: White House Deputy Communications Director Doesn’t See America As Homeland from John, followed by a minor squabble between the three of them over John’s suitability for a career in journalism), but it didn’t make it any less distracting.
Still, Hazel’s a professional.
Hence the sound of indignity in her retort.
“He could neve—“ She stops short, eyes him good and proper. As though he doesn’t tower over her. “Jack.”
“I’m going,” he says, words elongated as his head dips back exaggeratedly. It’s quick, how he recognizes that for a bit of a mistake, hastening his step out the door with only a brief pause to distract her more than Curt ever could. “Thanks, Haze.”
She’s convinced, when he shows up on her doorstep the next morning with two excessively large coffees — though she had intended to do so for him — that he had known exactly what he was doing, exhaustion of the bones be damned. But she’ll let him in anyway, protest quickly given over with her confirmation of having a working microwave to reheat their coffee before they have to get to office. The look in his eyes will be well rested, as though there’s not a shot in hell he could miss the smallest speck on a shot, let alone an entire — well, most of an entire — agency director. And, more than that —
a/n: i'm in a writing mood recently! disclaimer: i haven't read mota or on a wing and a prayer yet so i do not know anything about jack kidd's life beside what is available on the 100th bomb group's website, so consider some details ~exaggerated for dramatic effect~. title is from ml burch's "i feel like giving you things" and this fic is about neither the cold or the spring, but it fits.
Goddamn Air Exec.
Jack says goddamn Air Exec from the moment Bucky tells him that Hughlin recommended him, through two rounds of meetings with Harding—call me Chick—and Bowman—call me Red, through moving into the ops barracks, through shaking a thousand hands, and through getting a desk. Goddamn Air Exec. Goddamn Egan, goddamn Hughlin, and goddamn Air Exec.
His crew, his fort, and his dignity all because Bucky purposely flunked out of the tower. And Buck vouched for him! Goddamn Cleven and goddamn Air Exec. All of his training out the window for a desk in a corner office. He can’t even see the runway through the blinds, just the backroads of East Anglia and occasionally the Land Army girls and their cows. Five hundred hours of flight school for a desk in a corner office and a secretary.
“A secretary?” he asks as Harding points at a small station outside Jack’s newly-labeled office.
Chick nods. “Yes, Lieutenant Keene.” He looks around the busy floor, eventually settling on who he’s searching for. “There she is… Hazel!”
A head pops up from the mass of moving bodies and paper and a woman quickly makes her way across the room, weaving through the crowd with practiced ease. As she approaches, she’s smiling with a brightness that goes all the way to her warm, round brown eyes, hand outstretched for another yet another handshake. Goddamn Air Exec, but he’s less bitter about it.
“Jack, I assume you’ve met Lieutenant Keene—”
“Hazel, I insist.” Her grip is firm and as warm as her eyes.
They met the few times when he had to go to Bucky’s office—his office now—and she was waiting at her station outside. He remembers her as polite but busy, inoffensively curt. Not one of the staff who blathers away, overly chipper and overly interested in the reason for his visit, but also not one of the ones who snaps at him to sit and wait and then ignores him like he’s the reason they’re losing the war. Hazel’s friendly and effective, a good temperament for a C.O. He wonders why she’s in here and not up in the air.
“Good to see you again.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Jack, I insist.”
Her smile widens just so, and he has a feeling that they’re going to work well together.
She turns to Chick and nods to where she came from. “Last of the after actions for the 418th—” Jack pretends that doesn't hurt to hear. He should’ve been up there with his boys. Goddamn Air Exec. “—I’ll have ‘em to Sheila in fifteen, and I’ll be at my desk after that, in case you need anythin’.”
It takes him a moment to realize she’s speaking to him, and he mumbles an ‘of course’ at his shoes. He’s a man who gets waited on now; it would take some time to get used to. She departs with another smile and heads back into the fray.
As Chick leads Jack around the rest of the space, showing him charts and maps and a million other semi-familiar faces, he remains acutely aware of Hazel. She’s speaking to a WAC as they go over some maps, marking here and there, her encouraging smile no doubt prompting stellar work from the younger girl. He’s reminded of Ev, the way his friend’s genial countenance can turn a boring day kicking around the hard stand into a respite and a rough flight home from a mission into a night at a comedy club.
Then he misses his friends—Ev, Dougie, Crosby and the man the navigator has become since getting kicked off of the Crash Wagon. He misses hearing DeMarco and Cleven bicker as they climb into their fort, that damn dog never far behind as Lemmons likes to sneak him out onto the hard stand. He misses the feeling of sitting in his seat and the controls roaring to life under his fingers as he hears his crew get ready at their guns. He misses looking out the window to see Ginny settling into her cockpit to his right, grinning like it’s Christmas morning and popping her gum into her headset receiver to set off Knick Knack at her navigator’s seat.
He even misses Bucky and his plane-to-plane chatter, always vigilant, always watching out for his squadron, his group, and the rest of the wing. He misses the man Bucky can be in the air as opposed to the faux-apologetic fast-talker that landed Jack at a desk in the first place. Goddamn Air Exec.
But then he comes back to Hazel and the scrunch of her nose as she stretches her arms above her head with a yawn. She slumps back onto the desk she’s sitting on, looking around the room curiously before meeting Jack’s eyes and nodding. He nods back before Chick drags him off to some new wonder.
She’s at her desk in fifteen minutes like she told him she would be and sticks her head into his office with a smile. She smiles a lot. “I’m back. Holler if you need anything.”
By the time he can look up from the file he’s puzzling over, she breezes back to her desk and immediately busies herself at her typewriter.
He doesn’t know what to do with her. The other C.O.’s have their secretaries do the standard—take memos, keep their schedules, make coffees—but that seems insulting. She’s here to win a war; he wasn’t going to send her scrambling for sugar. On the other hand, it’s insulting not to utilize her, as sharp and reliable as she is. His father would find her a task and a ring, which he had with his last three secretaries. Jack had no intention of using his rank like that. He’ll find something for Hazel to do. It just has to be the right thing.
And he searches for too long, it seems, because after three days of greeting her when he arrives in the morning and occasionally asking her where certain stationery was stored, she steps into his office post-lunch and plops down in the chair in front of his desk with a sigh. Her eyebrows raise and she wears a bemused smile as she folds her hands in her lap. She reminds him of Bucky for a moment.
“Was it something I said?”
He shakes his head. He’d been hoping she wouldn’t notice his lack of engagement, or perhaps would lean into not having much on her plate. “I’ve never had a secretary before.”
“Most men haven’t.” She leans forward and starts picking at a chip in the wood of his desk. “Your job is my job, too.”
“You seem busy enough.” She does. Every time he looks out into the hall, she’s up to something, whether it’s at her desk, in the filing cabinets along the walls behind her, or somewhere on the ops floor. She knows what she’s doing; he’s the one who’s lost.
Her mouth purses. “Not for long. I’ll be done with the backlog Bucky left by EOD.”
“I’m sorry he left so much—”
Her exaggerated eye roll surprises him. “That’s the point, Jack. It’s too much work for any one man.”
Goddamn Air Exec.
“But that’s why you got me. We’re a team… so,” she raps his desk twice, “put me in, Coach.”
He wants to say something, to have an important Air Exec order or some example for her to follow, but as he looks into her expectant face, he comes up short. He hasn’t eaten yet today, but he’d shoot himself in the foot before he ever made her go to the mess for him. She reads him like a book, which only further rankles his sense of command.
“Well, what’s all this?” She spreads her hands over the papers in front of her.
“Interrogation logs, new crew files—” He points at a pile Chick’s aide had delivered that morning. “I need to get those back to Harding as soon as I sign them.”
“Sign ‘em now and I’ll run ‘em over.”
“No.” This is exactly what he’s been avoiding, assigning her utter tedium.
She pushes the papers toward him. “C’mon.”
He blinks at her before opening the file. It’s some report or inventory request, or both or neither, which he has no idea why he has to sign, but he’ll do it because that’s job along with waiting around and going to briefings and briefings about briefings. Not even a week in and he was ready to crawl out of his skin or at least out the window. Chick denied both his requests to fly so he’s truly stuck in this office for who knows how long. Goddamn Air Exec.
Two signatures, three, four, five—Hazel points to hidden dotted lines, flipping through the pages without a second glance, and Jack can’t help but feel like she’s tying his shoes. That probably flew with Bucky, but it wouldn’t with him. They gave him the promotion because they knew he could do the job well and he agreed. This is something he could be good at. A team of subordinates was a perk of the job, expected for a man of such a station, and he’s grateful that folks were will to help out, but he’d grown up watching secretaries turn from aides to mother-wives and he doesn’t want that for anyone, especially a gal as nice as Hazel. He’ll find something for her to do.
He signs the last page and closes the file as Hazel stands, hand outstretched. Pausing for a moment, he doesn’t pass it over quite yet. “I don’t want you being my errand girl.”
She reaches across the desk and plucks the file from him. “It’s my job.”
She turns on a graceful heel and heads out across the floor, making it to Harding’s office and back before he could find it in him to stop staring at her confident, unaffronted gait. Bright laughter—the brightest he’s ever heard—bubbles out of her as she tucks her skirt under her thighs and takes a seat at her desk.
“You could’ve signed three more reports in the time that took me. Now I’m gonna have to wait for you.” She tsked. “Wastin’ both our time.”
She’s tying his shoes again and that lights a fire under his ass for the rest of the day. He clears the files that had accumulated on his desk plus two rounds of parts inventory from the hard stand and he gets a memo off to London requesting more birds. He feels satisfied by the time he flicks off the light and gathers his jacket and coat. It sure wasn’t flying, but it felt like making a difference all the time. He didn’t know he could do that from behind a desk.
It takes some soul-searching, but he manages to light his own fire for the rest of the week. He maintains his composure through the worst of it, a long fog delay that had half his pilots climbing into the tower to beg him for clearance, a ‘misplaced’ delivery of Mae Wests that somehow ended up with the 418th before they came to ops, and another declined request to fly from Harding. Goddamn Air Exec.
The job gets easier each day, especially with Hazel right outside the door. It does feel more like a team than subordination as they move around each other, trading reports and memos without having to speak. Still, she’s a few steps ahead of him—coming through the door before he can call her to pick up a file, finding this or that form before he can realize he’s misplaced it—but he’s determined to catch up. He comes in early on Saturday and has the summarized after action reports in Chick’s office before Hazel’s arrived for the day. It’s a good feeling when her eyes go wide in surprise and her cheery mouth finds its usual smile.
“Well, I suppose we’re even now.”
“No,” he shakes his head, “not even close.”
If they’re really going to be a team, he’s going to even the playing field. No more having her play governess. Neither of them are here to clean up after someone else.
That evening, Hazel is leaning into Chick’s doorway as Jack leaves for the day, chatting with Sheila.
He mumbles a ‘pardon me’ as he passes and her face lifts at the sight of him. “Major Kidd! We were just talkin’ about you.”
“You were?” he asks as they fall into lockstep on their way out.
“We were sayin’ how nice it is to have an Air Exec who knows what he’s doin’.”
“Bucky tried his best.” He’s lying.
She knows it and she snorts. “He was fun to have around, certainly.”
It’s quiet as they walk. The flights have stopped for the day and if he strains his ears he’d be able to hear the crews working away on the hard stand, but there’s no need for that now. That’s another thing he’s learning—when he’s doing the job and when he’s not. With the warm evening air and the blazing sunset in front of them, he’s grateful for the time off the clock.
He looks at Hazel and is struck by the sight. The light washes her dark cherrywood skin in a velvet glow, sending shadows of her lashes and her nose across her face. He’s suddenly jealous of Bucky and he doesn't know why. She catches his eye and smiles. Blanching, he clears his throat and stares at the ground. His boots are the cleanest they’ve been since he’s been in England now that he’s out of the grease and dust of the planes. Goddamn Air Exec.
They’re nearly at the ops barracks when he realizes that he doesn’t know where she’s going. Does she live in the barracks? Is she one of the girls who’s at a billet in town? Why doesn’t he know? Shouldn’t he know? She’s never in the mess and is so rarely at the Silver Wings. He wonders what she does with her time. He realizes he doesn’t know much about her at all, not her hometown, her family, where she was before the Air Force. The Oberlin pennant on the wall in his office had prompted her to ask into his life, but that’s because she’s always where he is, but he’s never where she is. He wants to be.
“Where’re you headed?”
She comes to a stop. “Home.”
“Where’s that?”
Her wry smile makes his heart skip a beat as she turns down the path leading toward the enlisted barracks. “Good evening, Major.” She never calls him that.
“Some of us’ll be at the pub tonight—Chick, Red, Bucky… it’d be good to see you.” He takes a half-step toward her so as not to yell the offer, maybe she’ll take it if he’s gentle. Part of him hopes she’ll say yes. He wants time with her outside of keeping the group on its feet, just an hour to hear her laugh, to ask her where she gets that charming accent from, to ask her for a dance. Part of him hopes she’ll give him one more good smile and walk away, that she’ll remind him there are rules, lines to be maintained. He’s not going to become his father.
“Good evening,” she repeats and he watches her go. He doesn’t have time to dwell on the ache in his chest as Cros yells at him from across the way. He’ll have his night and she’ll have hers.
He’s not sure if he should apologize for being out of turn when he sees her next, clear the air and make it clear that he’s not… he isn’t going to be that man. He reasons to himself that wants to know her as a teammate, in the same way he’d come to know the members of his crew. It’s what any good leader does. There’s a short speech ready to go when he enters HQ Monday morning after seeing the forts off.
She greets him as politely as she always has, but he gets the feeling he probably wouldn’t be able to tell if she’s upset. Her cards are meticulously close to her chest while she learns about the people around her. It’d be a good quality in a C.O. He thinks of all the women he’d just sent to Norway—Ginny, Vera, Amelie, Suzanne. Hazel would fit right in.
There’s a small box on his desk, no sender address upon investigation. “Hazel?”
“Yeah?” she asks as she gets up from her desk.
“Do you know who this is from?” He’s popping open one end with his letter opener.
“Oh, well,” she starts, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe, “it’s from my momma” Her inflection is that of an embarrassed and entertained daughter.
A swath of white silk flutters to the floor and he picks it up. It’s a scarf decorated with rows of small and large flowers. From… from her mother?
“I—I, uh, I wrote her about you and she insisted on sending it. Bucky got one, too, when he started.”
He couldn’t recall Bucky ever wearing a scarf. “What’d he do with it?”
She scoffs. “God knows. I don’t think he remembers getting it. It was one of his… one of his mornings.”
“Hungover?”
“Still drunk.”
Closing distance, she takes the scarf from him gently and tosses it around his shoulders. She’s so near now as she starts tying it and he can look at her while she concentrates, her eyes glittering with that hope that never seems to fade. Does her mother have the same eyes? The same round apples of her cheeks, the lovely point of her chin? And her perfume, the faint hint of roses he occasionally gets during the day now in full force as she works. He feels flush and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands or where to put his eyes or what to say. A woman who’d only heard about him in letters sent her daughter to war and is sending him beautiful scarves. That’s the kind of woman who would raise Hazel.
“I always tell her that this is unnecessary, that y’all have mommas of your own to fuss over ya,” she says as she adjusts the knot at his neck and smoothes her hands over his shoulders.
“I—I don’t,” he stammers out.
Her eyes widen and he hates the kick in his chest. “Oh, I’m—I’m so sorry, Jack, I had no idea.”
He waves her off but can’t quite find the words. There’s a yearning suddenly, one he left in the dark years ago, and he doesn’t know what’ll come out if he tries to name it. Hazel puts a comforting hand on his arm and looks at him sympathetically. “Well, I’ll tell my momma to keep sending scarves… only if—if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I could use a few more of these,” he says, glancing down at the knot at his neck. He probably looks ridiculous wearing it without the rest of his flight gear, but the accomplished smile on Hazel’s face is worth it. He’ll bear all the stares in the world if it keeps her smiling.
She gives him one more once over before returning to her desk. “It’s a good color on you.”
“Matches my eyes?”
“Something like that.” She winks.
His stomach flips; he thinks of his father and three weddings.
“Oh,” she calls, “you can keep it on.”
He raises an interested eyebrow.
“The Telergma mission, you’re going. Chick sent authorization this morning.”
Three days later, Ev’s the only one who comments on Jack’s new gear after they finally get the all-clear for engine start.
“That from Franny?” his co-pilot asks. It’s a good guess; his sister would send something like it.
“Lieutenant Keene’s mother sent it.”
Ev scoffs with a shake of his head. “Your secretary’s mother is sending you scarves? Goddamn Air Exec.”
Yeah, Jack thinks, smirking out the window and sitting a little taller. Goddamn Air Exec.
AAAAND ❛ you’re such a tease. ❜ for dealer’s choice! 😋
a/n: how does post war hazel and jack foreplay sound for everyone? some post war hazel and jack foreplay for the table?
content warning for choking. (nsfw under the cut.)
“You’re such a tease,” Jack says, leaning on the doorframe behind Hazel as he does up the cuffs of his shirt. He hasn’t buttoned it yet — thank God — so she can glimpse the flat, lithe plane of his torso under the crisp white cotton. Chicago has put color on him, turning his freckles the same brown eggshell as the tilled fields outside of Akron, and it’ll be a shame to cover up all that good warm skin with three layers that’ll have to come on and off again according to the manners of the evening. Might as well not let him get too dressed up.
Hazel doesn’t respond, only looks at him through the bathroom mirror and leans into her reflection to carefully apply her lipstick. Raven Red is his favorite shade on her — perhaps because it’s all she could find after the first time he’d asked her to dinner in East Anglia and she had to run into town to borrow a smear from a fresh-faced girl of seventeen, who watched, bewildered, as an WAC lieutenant commandeered her lipstick. She can’t put on too much because she intends to eat if he really makes them go to this thing. He could grant her that after he’s run her across the city and back three times now, not to mention the meetings and the lunches and making polite conversation with his secretary because he’s been held up on so-and-so call.
This is about calling his bluff; neither of them want to spend an evening politely clapping at trite speeches celebrating his father’s third promotion in as many years while the newest wife sits on his left and his two children sit in the back because they wouldn’t pay him for the good seats. It’s a matter of which one of them will break first.
Her money’s on Jack.
“Where’d you get those?” he asks.
She turns over her left shoulder so that he gets her good side and the beauty mark on her cheekbone. Her smile is soft, unassuming as she runs a hand over the lustrous black silk at her hip. “Oh, these old things? Found ‘em in my mama's attic. Forgot I even had ‘em.”
Sliding a hand into his pocket, he rests his head on the door frame and gives her a long, hungry look that burns up her ankles, the backs of her thighs, her spine, and across her bare shoulders, heating her skin to a low simmer and kicking up her heart rate. His mouth gives him away with the faintest of half-smiles, that look of amazement he gets right before he finds it in him to be ten minutes late instead of fifteen minutes early.
But she’s not aiming for late, she’s aiming for absent. Now, if she could only get her mascara on and bat her lashes and tell him that her feet hurt oh so terribly from all this walking and Franny probably won’t show either and we still have some cake in the refrigerator.
The custom lingerie is a bit heavy handed, she knows that, but she’s missed him so much and she’s been in town four days already with frighteningly few hickies to show for it. A night in won’t kill him and won’t kill her, more importantly; he’s been showing her around Chicago like he’s about to start selling her real estate, but what she wants more than a home is him and if she has to doll up to remind him that there’s a half-dressed woman in his apartment who’s been aching something awful since they last spent a week together, then so be it. The food is always overcooked and under seasoned at these things anyway, and they’ve got red beans and rice next to the cake.
As she reaches for her mascara, Jack pushes off the door and takes his sweet time getting to her. Arms around her waist first — fingers first actually, eager and strong, then his long palms — followed by his chest against her back, and his skin sears on hers, and finally his chin against her ear and a shiver she can’t hold back as his lips ghost past her earlobe. His cologne, bright and sharp, washes over her and fires her nerves in excitement as her whole being responds to having him so close. It would be so easy to give in now and let him set her on fire until he checks the time and dashes out to get his tie from the bedroom, but she’s keeping her eyes on the prize.
Pushing onto the tips of her toes, she leans forward and brushes her hips into his. He makes a sound between a gasp and a groan, but she presses on and meticulously wands her lashes without regard for the fingers coming to dig into her sides. She’s soft there, with a year of stateside eating in her; let him grab.
He’s hard already — silk lets her feel everything — but that’s no guarantee they’re staying in. She wants it in writing.
One wiggle of her hips, then another, and she’s simply just going about her business getting ready for an event that he insisted on attending when a hand pulls her hips flush to his and runs up over her navel, between her breasts, pans over her sternum before settling under her chin and holding her throat.
Her eyes flutter shut and it’s hard to think with her pulse thrumming under the heel of his hand. She needs to… she needs… All she knows is the wiry muscle of his forearm holding her to her and the growing need at her core, but it’s no use rubbing her thighs together as her stockings are starting to itch with sweat. The only reason she hasn’t taken them off is because he likes to, undoing her garter clasps with his slow, unique brand of patience that leaves her pawing at him fruitlessly.
He presses a firm kiss to her temple and she lets her head fall back on his shoulder with a sigh. Now was this so hard?
“Haze.”
“Hm?” His fingers are so long that his thumb can rub over the underside of her jaw. She wants it in her mouth.
“Hazel.” He squeezes for a moment and her eyes roll in their sockets. “Look at me, Haze.”
Her lashes are wet already as they part and his green-blue eyes meet hers with concern and authority. “My sister really wanted to see you.”
“I’ll ring her first thing in the morning.” She’ll say anything, anything to get him to sweep her into the bedroom and lay his love down by moonlight as the city races by outside.
“Promise?”
She’s distracted by the thought of him covered in her lipstick, Satsuma plum purple smeared across the freckles of his neck and chest. “Uh-huh.”
He squeezes again and she whines, arching her back and feeling the throbbing length of him pushing against her ass. “Use your words.”
“Yes,” she says, “I will, I will.”
He presses another kiss to her temple — her sign that he’s calling the shots now — and she slumps into him as his free hand wanders under the waistband of her panties.
also [sliding a $50 bill across the table] euphoric for Jack and Hazel perchance……
[ euphoric ] for a celebratory kiss
hiiiiiiii bestie here you go.
Jack is a man of his word. “A Kidd promise is a promise you keep,” his father always said, and that’s why he doesn’t make many of them. It’s irresponsible—hope is a precious, precious thing, and letting it live on in a promise is like lighting a match in a room with a gas leak. It’s going to catch fire and take you with it before you even smell the problem.
He’s careful with his language, speaking in facts and keeping “promise”, “swear”, and “if” off his tongue. It’s not worth tempting fate. Enough of his men didn’t come back after a classic “I’ll see you later” for Jack to know that something out there has it out for those who think their will is strong enough to rewrite the inevitable. He’s even careful with his own thoughts, letting optimism rise in his mind but never indulging it. A Kidd promise is a promise you keep, even to yourself.
He makes one promise during the war. One. Through hundreds of crews, new forts, missions—both milk runs and sawmills, through losing the best pilot he’s ever seen not once but twice, and through building his little family in Group Ops, he only makes one promise, and he makes it by accident.
They watch Hazel as she walks away having just excused herself for the night. Jack feels like he’s on fire and in a blizzard with no coat at the same time and the alcohol isn’t helping him decide which one is it. He always feels like this after a dance with her and he can still feel the smoothness of her hand in his around the glass of his drink.
Ev claps him on the shoulder, making him blink and Hazel’s gone, out the door and into the night. He should get up, he should get up and run after her and walk her home but he’s glued to the bar.
“When’re you gonna kiss that woman?” Ev asks, shaking Jack at his collar.
“When we win.” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself.
Ev’s grin is wicked. “Atta boy.”
Jack can’t bring himself to protest. He means it, as much as he shouldn’t. A year into working with Hazel everyday and he thinks about kissing her more often than not, kissing her as a thank you, as a plea, as an assurance, as a promise. A promise that he’s coming back from this mission and eating breakfast before she gets into the office and that he’s getting sleep and that he’s doing it all for her, because she needs him too.
So when Cros sticks his head in Jack’s office, eyes wide, smile on but dripping with nervousness, and says “Japan surrendered,” there’s only one thing to do.
He waits until Hazel is back at her desk, filing papers instead of joining the raucous celebrations outside, and calls her in.
She enters with a smile and they stare at each other for a second. It hasn’t sunk in yet and he imagines it won’t for a while, but he knows that it happened. The war is over—not a promise but a fact. The promise is that they’re going home, as many of them as he can take with him.
“Not joining the party?” she asks, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe.
He shakes his head. “Not my scene.”
She laughs. “Since when?”
She’s got him and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything except getting up, crossing the room, and looking into her eyes as she looks up at him. It’s so quiet despite the noise outside—he can hear her breath and the light rain hitting his window; he can hear his blood in his veins and his heart thumping in his chest.
They stand for a moment before she tilts her head inquisitively. “Jack, what are—”
He kisses her. After two years and a war and her tragedies and his, after grounding himself for her sake, after fighting with himself and Germany at the same time, he kisses her.
She tenses for a beat, a gasp muffled in her throat, then steps toward him and grabs at his collar, tugging him toward her. Her lips are soft and silken, plush as he nips at them with his teeth, and she tastes like Army coffee. His hands are overwhelmed, first stuck between not wanting to disturb her carefully pinned hair and wanting to watch the curls pool over her shoulders, then paralyzed with choice, so he lets them wander everywhere, up her back, around her throat, over her cheeks. He wants more—the curve of her ass, her thighs—and her breathy moans go straight to the press in his slacks.
The desk, he manages to think, he can put her on his desk. He will in a moment, he just needs to kiss her a bit more, press into her more and guide her arms around his shoulders so she can tangle her hands in his hair. The tug sends lightning down his spine and he moans into her warm mouth.
“Jack, there’s a—oh God.”
Hazel rips away with a squeak and Jack sees Cros standing at her desk, mouth open.
“I was—Rosie—you know, I—oh brother,” the navigator says as he scurries away, the file he’s carrying spilling out onto the floor. He turns around and drops to his knees to scramble for the papers. “I’m just going to—I mean, I didn’t see—”
“Oh, Jesus, Cros,” Hazel says and she kneels down to help. She sends him on his way after a moment and rises with her hands on her hips. “Now, where were we?”
He’ll kiss her again happily, but he’d prefer a place with no chance for prying eyes. “My quarters,” he says, and that’s a promise.
tagged by @latibvles, @almost-a-class-act, and @ktredshoes. tagging @shoshiwrites, @mercurygray, and @loveduringthewar here’s some post-algeria jack kidd pov
“See? Right there,” Ev says. “Thought I needed stitches.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Hazel drawls.
Ev tilts his chin and raises an eyebrow. “You know what would help? A dan—”
“A dance?” Hazel finishes for him. She taps his knee and flicks a hand toward where the Clubmobile girls are gathered by the side of the dancefloor. “Go ask Tatty.”
“Before this thing’s over, Lieutenant Keene…”
She shakes her head. “Yeah, yeah.”
Ev gets up and pulls Tatty out onto the floor as Hazel looks around the table. “That guy, huh?”
Brady laughs and Lola stops by again, dragged into a round of cards by Bobbie who always needs the support when she’s playing Crank. Jack finishes his beer, gets a scotch, and plays two hands, but he mostly looks at Hazel and she’s a sight to see, isn’t she? With her hair starting to slip from its pins in dark whisps at her ears and the nape of her dewy neck; the blue and orange light that only falls on the back tables coloring her nose, those twin freckles that sit just about there and there on her right cheekbone.
He’s never heard her laugh like this — full-throated, musical. There’s a ring to it, one that reverberates deeper into his bones than any roar of a plane’s engine. And seeing her do it, lips toward the sky, a smile so sweet he can taste it in his drink—
A dangerous thought starts to skirt the periphery of his mind. I want… He’d never let it get this close if he were sober.
Over the fan of her cards, her gaze meets his as Brady harps on the band’s tuning — all, or nothing at all — and his scotch hits his nose with notes of rose perfume, burning on the way down.
i have no idea if this would ever even be like the tiniest bit possible in canon but in the spirit of getting WEIRD:
Jack has a crush on Dora 🎤
a/n: jack’s residence during the war was listed as new rochelle so it’s entirely feasible that he meets dora. let’s pretend the air force gave jack two weeks at home.
“Does Rosie know you’re writin’ his woman?” Hazel asks, sliding another letter from Ms. Montgomery across his desk.
“She’s a friend,” replies Jack as he pulls his letter opener from his desk drawer, a letter opener that Hazel tracked down for him.
She turns to a filing cabinet with a sniff. “It was two weeks. How friendly could you’ve gotten?”
“Alright,” Jack says, standing to his full height before moving to her left, propping an elbow on the top metal shelf, “out with it.”
Hazel blinks as she shoves a drawer closed, a pained smile on her face. “With what?”
He crosses his arms and she deflates. “Sergeant Johnson mentioned it when I went to pick up the mail. You barely wrote once a month before you left and now you’re back and poppin’ out two a week.”
It’s quiet for a moment — for too many moments, really — and she feels like an idiot for bringing it up. Jealous and childish and in the middle of a war and she seems like a nice girl and—
Jack takes her hand, turning it over in his long and gentle fingers, and presses a kiss into the heel of her palm. The warmth of his lips zaps up her arm and straight to her heart, wiping away the bitterness that had been festering since this morning. Closing her eyes, she exhales and lingers in his touch, grateful that he’d thought to shift his back to the windows and wrap them in this instant.
He clears his throat. “I can start writing you letters.”
“Jack,” she starts. Why does she let her heart run away with itself? “You don’t—“
“I’m sorry I didn’t write.” It comes out in a rush, heavy and guilty, and she knows this has sat with him since he came back, flaring every time she drops his post at his desk.
She risks bringing a hand up to cup his cheek, bone and ruddiness under her fingers. “You were enjoying a well-deserved break.”
“I missed you.”
And she doesn’t know how to respond to that. They stand, face-to-face, a bit too tangled, until Cros knocks and they break apart.
Send me “___ has a crush on ___” to see their reaction
