No Secrets Here
Finally - finally!!! - I am done with this. A few months ago accidentally typing Joan for John lead me to - but what if Joan and Bucky were siblings?
Fair warning - it's a bit long for Tumblr, but I'm not sure it needs to be on AO3.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, it seemed like Bucky Egan was still a man with secrets.
The guys who’d known Bucky since training had known, of course, that he’d grown up in a town famous for ships, that his family all thought he was crazy for wanting to fly, and that he had several sisters whose names no one (apart from Gale) could ever really remember. What he’d failed to mention was that one of those sisters was presently in Europe - and, as they discovered coming back from the day’s training flight, would be coming to visit this afternoon on a weekend pass from her own unit, now stationed in Sussex.
The idea that Bucky could hold out on sharing anything meant that the arrival of Miss Egan (her first name still hadn’t yet made the rounds) was now an item of extreme public interest, and many theories were being exchanged about why, after all the things he was so loud about, this was the one thing Bucky had chosen to keep quiet.
There was quite the crowd waiting patiently a stone’s throw back from the front gate where the bus from Norwich would drop her off, all of them dutifully waiting as her brother loped up, hands in his pockets, and looked woefully at the waiting aviators. “Don’t you jokers have somewhere to be?”
“Nope,” replied Claytor with relish, speaking for everyone there as he did so. “Fellow’s got a sister he’s been holding out on means his friends have a right to know.”
“Not sure where it says that,” Bucky said with faint annoyance, settling himself down on the last bit of space on the log and stretching his legs out. The shade was a welcome change from the August sun and the bus, it seemed, was a little behind schedule. (Bucky would hardly have been the one coming early to wait.) “That better not be money changing hands,” he said lightly, watching hands flicker in and out of pockets on his extreme left.
“Then it isn’t,” Curt said roundly, and offered no further reply, which only made Bucky’s grin get a little more brittle in response.
It seemed nearly time to give up the hunt when the bus finally appeared, pootling down the lane at half- speed so it would not miss the stop. The crowd sat up in anticipation, eyes peeled.
The doors opened. A mother and son, her clutching a large hold-all and him a toy airplane, the boy waving furiously at the fliers, a few older women with their shopping, and one young and - from a distance - rather lovely looking American, minding her manners by letting everyone else off the bus first.
The waiting crowd on the bench sat up a little straighter and hands went to ties and crusher caps. Miss Egan had impeccably straight seams and a pair of legs to really set them off.
"You didn't say your sister was a pilot," Benny said, watching as the brunette waved politely from across the street, silver wings flashing over the pocket of her uniform jacket.
"She's not," Bucky said, his face fixed somewhere between resignation and pride, the kind of look a guy gets when he has to introduce his little sister to his friends. "They're jump wings."
Benny’s shock was immediately apparent. "You’re telling me she's a paratrooper? Those guys are fuckin' nuts."
"The girls, too," Bucky confirmed with a grimace, allowing her to cross the distance from the guardhouse to the waiting tree before giving a proper welcome. "Hi, Joanie."
“John.” Joan Egan, it seemed, did not go in for nicknames the way her brother did. Just as tall, and with the same dark hair, there was a clear family resemblance between the two, the same eyes and a hint of the same smile, though it looked as though hers was not as easily given as her brother’s was. There was probably scarcely a year between them - Irish twins.
“I told everyone to play nice,” Bucky offered. “Guys, this is my sister, Joanie. Or Lieutenant Egan if you’re…you know, not friends yet.”
“You’re going to let her be friends with us?” Gale asked with a dry half smile. He’d been a few steps behind Bucky the whole way here, hardly interested in the impending arrival since he already had a girl at home he wasn’t interested in trading in.
“Fair point,” Bucky said, looking around at the assembled pilots and deciding his best friend perhaps had a point. “You jokers better stick with Lieutenant Egan. That’s Crank, Blakely, Claytor, Benny DeMarco, Biddick, Dickie, and Gale Cleven.”
“I remember Gale,”Joan offered, shaking hands with him first. (More glances - what was remember about?) “It’s very nice to meet you all,” she added, shaking hands with each one. “I’d say he’s told me all about you but I think you all know he’s not much of a letter writer.”
“I’ve been busy,” Bucky replied sharply, drawing his hands out of his pockets so he could pick up the small overnight bag she’d brought with. “Someone’s gotta actually fight the war. Are we going, or what?”
The group moved off in the direction of visiting officer’s quarters and the officer’s club, Dickie and Claytor and Biddick hanging back to discuss some nuance of the money that had not been changing hands earlier while Crank and Blakely made small talk about the ride from Sussex and the state of English trains, and whether or not she’d been to London yet.
“You didn’t say she was pretty,” Benny observed to everyone and no one. “Could have saved yourself a little bother if you had.”
“Didn’t want to borrow any trouble,” Bucky said, still a little testy. “Besides, she’s, you know. Joanie. Skinned knees and sharp elbows she used to stick in my ribs all the time and a mean way of shouting when you’ve done something wrong.” Bucky looked ahead to Crank and Blakely and Joan, walking half a step faster than everyone else. “Sort of forgot she was grown up, after being away.”
—
Tatty, Mary, Helen and Fred had taken the idea of a visiting dignitary to heart, and had scrubbed the Aero Club from floor to crown, even going so far as to put out some flowers as if to assure their visitor that her brother was in good hands and this was a place with a little bit more class than your average bomb group. Drinks were produced, chairs were pulled out, and Miss - Lieutenant - Egan was even consulted on the choice of music. (This she seemed to have in common with her brother - though Blue Skies never got mentioned, she did pick Goodman, which was known to be a favorite.)
“So what makes a nice girl from Wisconsin decide the way she’s gonna support the war effort is by jumping out of airplanes?” Blakely asked, once they’d all found chairs in the officers club far enough away from the radio that they could talk, and Claytor and Gale had been dispatched to the bar for a round of drinks.
“Made it easier to get away from my dumb brother,” Joan said with a smile while half the group laughed at Bucky’s expense. He merely shrugged on the other side of the table. “It was a challenge, and I like challenges.”
It was Bucky’s turn now to smile, some of the evidently proud older brother coming through. “The thing you gotta know about Joanie, Crank, is that if you tell her she can’t do a thing, she will do it half as slow and twice as good. Including joining the army.”
“They know you’ve got an older brother who’s a pilot?” Blakely asked with polite interest.
“They know she’s got an older brother,” Bucky said pointedly, hackles already fully up. “That’s the only part that matters.”
“There’s a reason I joined the regular Army rather than the Air Corps,” Joan replied smoothly, taking a sip of her drink and shooting a glare at Bucky that would have brought down a plane. “I understand pilots tend to talk a lot.”
“‘S true, Bucky, you do tend to talk a lot,” Curt said with a shrug and a smile. “She was working here, I don’t think we’d ever hear the end of it. Not that that would stop a fellow from asking,” he added with a slightly more sly smile.
“Curt, I don’t think I like you today,” Bucky replied with a sour look, pointing a single opinionated finger at his friend.
“Lieutenant Biddick, just for that I think I’ll ask you to dance,” Joan said, shooting a look at her brother that dared him to just try and put his foot in the middle of it.
“It’s only ‘cause I know how hard he hits,” Bucky said to their retreating backs, sitting back in his chair and sucking on his teeth a little. The pair of them looked more than a little mismatched in the middle of the clubroom, but that didn’t seem to be stopping them - Curt looked a little too pleased with himself and Joan looked like a princess, all crisp uniform lines and upswept hair.
“You think she’s got a friend?” Claytor asked, only somewhat hopeful. “Maybe someone else she could bring along next time. Shouldn’t be traveling alone all the way from - wherever it is they’ve got her.”
“Suffolk,” Bucky pronounced the word like he didn’t like the taste of it. “Got a couple, far as I know.” He looked around the table at the somewhat surprised faces. “Hey, just cause I’m not writing her back doesn’t mean I’m not reading the ones she sends me. Whole half the unit’s girls.”
“And they’re all crazy?” Claytor said, still sounding hopeful around the gum he was chewing. “I like the sound of that.”
“Maybe you could switch to flying Skytrains, Roy,” Dickie offered, grinning over his cigarette. “Get you closer to the girls.”
“And farther from the action,” Claytor replied with a grimace, sitting back in his chair like he was seriously offended it would even be suggested. “No, thank you. Ain’t worth it - no matter how pretty they are,” he added, his eyes raking longingly over Joan’s impossibly straight seams and the back of her skirt.
“You want to think real hard about what you say next, Roy,” Bucky advised, following the line of his friend’s gaze, and Claytor made a show of coughing that made Dickie sit up and pat his back a few times, still smiling at all of it.
The song ended, and Curt broke away with a little bow, heading for the bar.
“Well, Major Cleven, what do you say?” Joan asked, returning from the floor with rosy cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. “Seems a little less likely that my brother’s going to object to you.”
“Nice try, Joanie, but the Major doesn’t dance,” Bucky said, smiling confidently at his sister’s tactical error.
“I can always make an exception,” Gale offered, rising from his seat with a smile of his own that left Bucky hanging loose and Joan smirking as they returned to the music and the golden glow of the radio dial and the broadcast from whatever base Glenn Miller was playing this week.
“I think you might pay for that later,” Joan said, once they had Bucky and the rest of the gang in their mirrors, most of them already teasing him about letting Gale get away with it.
“I think I can take him,” Gale assured her. “I know I haven’t known him as long but a best friend’s got a good idea of his moods.”
“So how bad is it, really?” Joan asked, when the music was loud enough and they were far enough away from the crowd. “Being up there.”
Gale did his best to hide his surprise - though whether that was at the question itself or the boldness with which it was asked he didn’t let on. “That’s one hell of a way to run an ambush,” he said with an uncertain smile.
“It’s easy enough to joke that I haven’t been in combat yet and I have to ask, but he won’t tell me, Gale. He’s a bad liar about some things and I think that’s why he’s not writing. Which means it must be pretty bad and he doesn’t want me to worry. And I know you - you won’t lie.”
Gale considered this a moment, the two of them in slow rotation on the floor. “It’s hard getting back in the plane, sometimes. Knowing you’re going to…leave someone up there, some days. Easier not to think about it. Or try to explain it to your kid sister.”
“I wish he’d stop treating me like I’m ten,” Joan said strongly. “He’s only a year older, that doesn’t give him that much ammunition.”
“He cares about you, is all. Doesn’t want to worry you before your time. And it’s…hard to describe,” Gale said, his voice slow and philosophical. “Better not to try. And it’ll be different for you, being infantry,” he added, trying to save some ground. “Not the same at all.” She looked at him with a vague sense of betrayal, but did not press him, though her injured silence spoke louder than words ever could.
The song wrapped up, and Gale shepherded her back to the table and Bucky’s once-more watchful eye. But he did not have a chance to start on Gale - another guest had appeared in the periphery that caused the airmen to stand up, as one, and straighten their backs, and Joan to hang back a little, watching the others to see how she should go.
“The word around town is that we have a special guest here this evening,” Colonel Harding said, looking around the table with a roguish grin. “Can’t have my officers holding out on introducing pretty girls, you know.”
Bucky swallowed his unease and tried hard to smile. “Colonel Harding, this is my sister, Lieutenant Joan Egan. Joan, this is our CO, Colonel Harding.”
Harding smiled and shook hands, his interest acute. “I can see the resemblance. Your brother’s one of our best pilots, Lieutenant. I hope you and your family are proud of the work he’s doing out here.”
“We are, sir, very much.”
“Anyone shown you the dance floor yet?” Harding’s smile was all easy charm, his fingers, for once, free of his usual and customary cigar, palm open to offer a hand. “If we haven’t, I’ll be the first.”
Joan’s expression was, for the first time that night, hard to read, a kind of polite and slightly blank look that wouldn’t have been out of place in some kind of advertising feature - the bland housewife saying yes to whatever was required of the scene. “I’ve been very well taken care of so far, Colonel, but I’d still be delighted.”
“Just have her home by ten, sir,” Bucky said with a strained smile, and Harding only grinned, waving him off with a casual hand and immediately installing his arm around her shoulder in a way that left her brother swallowing uncomfortably in his chair. Joan, for her part, looked extremely nonplussed, smiling and chatting as though there was not anything the least bit wrong or off-putting about any of it.
There was no formula for how you were supposed to look while your commanding officer danced with your sister and flirted the whole time while doing it, but Bucky certainly tried to follow it, legs and arms crossed, his mustache stroked smooth by anxious fingers, hardly noticing anyone else on the floor. It was a strange look for him, his usual energy damped down either by manners or fear - and a fearful Bucky was a creature not often seen, in this room or any other.
The song, mercifully, was a short one, and Harding left her with a smile and a short bow and a kiss on the hand that made her smile and laugh and still retreat hastily back to her brother and his friends and the sanctuary of a chair.
“You could have turned him down, Joanie, ” Bucky said, making room for her between himself and Gale. The club was fuller now and most of the others had floated off to other distractions - Curt and Dickie to the bar to flirt with Mary, Claytor and Blakely to the darts board. The novelty had worn off - she was here now, and known, and there would be time enough for teasing later. “There’s nothing says you have to dance with the CO.”
“I just thought -” Joan cut herself off, her expression was hard to read. “Didn’t seem wise, is all. Men …remember things like that - getting turned down.”
Bucky’s eyes narrowed, studying his little sister a great deal closer now, his focus intense. There was a story here he had not yet heard. “Do they?”
She swallowed and sat up a little straighter, mindful of Gale’s careful eyes and her brother’s sudden interest. “Forget I said anything.”
“Don’t think I will,” he pressed on, a dog on a scent he was not going to let lie easy. “What don’t they forget, Joan? And what are they asking?”
Her jaw was fixed. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“You can handle a lot,” Bucky pressed on, his anger on a slow boil behind his eyes, his mind forming a pretty clear picture between what she would and would not say, and it was clear to anyone that they were no longer speaking about Harding. “Doesn’t mean you should.”
"And what would you do, if you knew when you said anything they'd turn you out and say you couldn't hack it? You'd sit there and you'd take it, John." Her law was set in that hard, straight line that anyone who knew Bucky would recognize in an instant, that rock-solid determination to set and hold. "So that's what we're doing. We're taking it."
Bucky could play the fool easy enough, but he knew his sister in that way borne of the deep annoyance that comes alongside deep love, that she would fight for him, too, if it were asked of her, would do and be what she had always done and been, and that there were some battles he could not - should not - fight for her. And he knew something about staying a course and taking it, too. He sighed and leaned over to wrap one long arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close in the way that only older brothers can. “Well, you don’t have to take it for me, all right? I’m your brother, it’s my job. My job,” he repeated, as if he needed reminding. “And I’ll come fight the next fool who tries, Joanie. Don’t think I won’t.” She seemed small for a moment, shrinking into him, and nodded. “Put that in a letter, would you?”
She gave him a shove, smiling once again. “Would you even read it?” But anyone watching could tell he was sincere, and she was only joking with him, siblings to their bones. And in the shoves and sighs and resignation there was a quiet reassurance: There are no secrets here: the only one who can hurt you is me, and the rest of the world isn’t allowed, or they’ll have me to answer to.
