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lochrannn · 3 years

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AU_gust: Let me play among the stars

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Prompt no 17: Wings

Relationships: Lila Pitts & Allison Hargreeves, minor Lila Pitts/Diego Hargreeves

Characters: Lila Pitts, Allison Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves

AN: So, you may have noticed that David Castañeda can’t wink and I’ve checked, canonically neither can Diego, so this comes up.

It’s half eleven in the morning at the Schiphol Hilton hotel bar and the staff have apparently taken pity on Lila and Allison and have not queried why they decided to drink Scotch before midday.

Lila took on her very first flight as first officer to Captain Allison Chestnut only about eleven hours ago and yet she feels like it has been a life altering experience. Or at the very least, after hundreds of hours of flight training, this trip has been the weirdest thing that has ever happened to her and in hindsight she thinks she was desperately ill prepared to contend with either members of the public or the fucking airline crew itself.

Roughly 11 hours earlier

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Allison Chestnut, I’ll be your captain for our overnight flight. With us today is First Officer Lila Pitts. We’re expecting clear skies ahead and with some tail winds we are hoping to arrive in Amsterdam about thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Once we’ve fully ascended, our cruising altitude will be approximately thirty five thousand feet. I wish you a very pleasant flight on board our plane and now I’d ask you to pay close attention to our cabin crew, headed up by chief flight attendant, Klaus Hargreeves, for the safety announcement.”

Allison clicks off the com and turns down the volume of the cabin announcement, and Lila can just about make out the cheerful voice of Klaus, who she only met while they were doing the final checks of the aircraft but took an instant liking to.

Lila is extremely nervous and doing everything in her power not to show that she’s intimidated by the fact that her first flight in a position of actual authority is with one of the most senior captains in the airline.

Even the relief crew seem significantly more experienced than Lila herself. At least that’s her impression with how Allison greeted the relief first officer, Vanya Cooper. The other pilot completely slipped by her, but Lila could have sworn she heard Vanya and Allison refer to him as Five. Must be some kind of nickname.

Despite her rank, Allison spends a lot of time chatting to Lila, as they don’t have that much going on once they are cruising. The other pilot tells Lila about her kid, her husband, who is apparently a professor, about her recent trips, and how much she loves the job.

She asks Lila how she came by her accent and they talk about how Lila ended up working for an American airline after effectively fleeing the UK and from a bad break-up.

Eventually Lila decides to ask about the thing that surprised her the first time she read the flight roster. “So, do you often fly with a crew where so many of the pilots are women compared to an all male cabin crew?”

“Huh, I hadn’t even thought about that,” Allison muses, then goes on, “It’s a hell of a combination of stewards, though, some of the nuttiest people working for this airline, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them all fly together. I’m sure it’s absolute mayhem back there.”

“How d’you mean?” Lila asks.

“Well, there’s Klaus, who is very good at his job, but an awful flirt and, well, he’s garnered a bit of a reputation. Then there’s Luther. Genuinely lovely guy, everybody loves working with him, but he’s just really not very good with passengers. Diego’s the complete opposite. Passengers love him, he makes a new best friend on every flight. Most people who work with him, though, think he’s kind of an asshole. Except maybe for Klaus and Ben, they seem to get on with him. Ben is actually the only one out there who I’d say is unquestionably competent, very snarky, but charming nevertheless. I’ve not flown much with Elliott, so can’t tell you much about him and I’ve never met the other guy. Axel was it?”

Lila checks the roster, nods and says, “Yupp.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of opportunities to make up your own mind about these guys. I will say this though, I’ve seen them all in bigger and smaller crisis situations and they really do all step up then.”

Lila is grateful for the amount of information Allison is willing to share with her. She wonders if this is considered gossipy or if it’s just a necessary exchange of intel with a coworker. Either way, she thinks it’s really useful.

About three quarters into their flight time, Allison and Lila are relieved by Vanya and “Five” and when they step into the cabin the light is already dimmed in an attempt to get the passengers to settle down in a hope that they will sleep.

Just after herself and Allison get comfortable in their seats Klaus turns up in the aisle and says in a low voice to Allison, “Uh, skip, it seems we have a bit of a situation in coach and we were wondering if maybe someone with a bit more authority is just the thing we need to nip this in the bud.”

Allison pulls her sleep mask off her eyes, turns to glare at Klaus and then turns to Lila with a glint in her eyes that definitely juxtaposes the pleasant smile she directs at her and says, “Oh, I think this would be a great learning experience for our new first officer, don’t you think, Klaus?”

“Sure,” Lila says with all the confidence she doesn’t feel, gets up out of her seat and follows Klaus into the back section of the plane.

Back at the hotel bar

“So, was this one of the weirder things to happen on a flight, or would you consider shit like this to be normal?” Lila asks Allison in a congenial tone.

“I’ve definitely seen shit that was way more crazy than this,” a far more gruff voice than she expected, answers Lila’s question, before Diego sits down on the barstool next to her.

Lila looks over at him and he does a thing with his eyes…. if she had to describe it she’d say he’d blinked at her with... intent… is that supposed to be a wink? Lila’s almost embarrassed for him, but somehow he pulls it off. If he was any less handsome, he most definitely wouldn’t have, so Lila decides simply not to dignify that nonsense with a response.

Instead she turns around to Klaus, who’s just sat down on Allison’s other side, is pushing his hair back dramatically and drawls, “Oh Schätzchen, you’ve not seen weird until you start dealing with dead bodies at forty thousand feet above sea level.”

Lila snorts into the drink she’s just brought to her lips.

About 6 hours earlier

On their short walk Klaus gives her the cliffnotes of the issue. “This weirdo English guy keeps demanding to go into the hold because he has some apparently precious cargo to check on and we’ve been trying to keep him calm, but he’s starting to wake up the passengers around him. Diego’s talking to him now, but I don’t think they’re getting on very well.”

Up ahead Lila sees a man about Klaus’s height, with dark hair and a tight fade, leaning into one of the rows of seats and it seems like he’s talking to one of the passengers intently.

She probably shouldn’t, seeing as their coworkers, but she does notice right away that he fills his uniform out very nicely and that he’s clearly got some deliberate designer stubble going on to enhance the sharp cut of his jaw.

But Lila pulls her thoughts back to the situation at hand and the fact that she probably has never had a situation where she needed to be as professional as now.

“I don’t know what to tell you, man… Even if you have the queen of England in a crate down in the hold, we just can’t let you go down there mid flight!” the steward, who Lila assumes must be Diego, explains to a man with grey hair, a tidy Van Dyke mustache, and… Christ, how pretentious can one guy be? … a monocle, sitting in the seat by the window.

She takes a deep breath and walks up to the commotion.

“What seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?” Lila asks as calmly as possible.

Diego opens his mouth, presumably to explain what’s going on, but he’s interrupted by monocle guy, who says in a clipped accent that reminds Lila uncomfortably of one of her old headmasters, “Ah, finally someone with some seniority. I am entirely exhausted trying to explain to this imbecile that I have important scientific business to take care of in the hull of this aeroplane. Young lady, would you do me the favour of providing me with access to my work?”

Lila ignores the scowl that comes across Diego’s face and instead says, again calmly, though she’s quickly understanding why the stewards have reached the end of their patience, “First officer Pitts, please.”

“Apologies, madame!” the pushy passenger shoots back, and Lila is annoyed by his lack of sincere contrition, but at least Diego sniggered next to her as she pulled rank, so that’s something.

“I am really sorry, Sir, we just cannot let you go down there, but may I ask what’s so important, you’d risk decompression in the cabin, endangering all of your fellow passengers?” Lila uses her poshest voice, hoping that she’ll appeal to this guy that way, and she really hopes she’s not veered into parody. At least her fellow stewards wouldn’t be able to tell.

“Says he’s got a sedated monkey in a crate,” Diego drawls before the passenger can answer and earns himself a withering stare by the grey-haired man.

“It’s a chimpanzee, you nimrod!” monocle guy spits at him and Lila ignores the way Klaus’s hand lands on Diego’s shoulder as he twitches forward.

Instead she addresses the passenger again, “I’m sure all the necessary precautions were taken to keep your chimpanzee comfortable and safe on this flight and I have to urge you to calm down. There is absolutely no way we can allow for you to go into the hold and I must point out that you’re beginning to upset the other passenger.”

“This is ridiculous!” the man exclaims and then completely surprises Lila by getting up abruptly, pushing past her and Klaus and making his way swiftly along the aisle towards the front of the plane.

That’s when things go bananas, because before either herself or Klaus can respond, Diego has launched himself past them and after the monocle guy, rugby tackles him to the ground, and to Lila’s complete horror, a huge, blond man in a steward’s uniform appears at the other end of the aisle to help Diego wrestle the unruly passenger into the middle section of the plane, where they swiftly draw the curtains so the passengers near them, who’ve been roused by the commotion, can’t see what’s going on.

After two more rounds at the Schiphol Hilton hotel bar

“... so we had to get the fire crew to bring on a wheelchair so we could weekend-at-bernie’s that mofo and get his corpse off the plane before the other passengers even found out that anyone had died.” Klaus finishes his tale.

“Jesus,” Lila breathes. Allison just shrugs her shoulders.

“Right, Tom Bradey over there and I have to get going. You see, Lila, cabin crew don’t get the same amount of rest time during turnaround as the VIP do. That’s what I call the Very Important Pilots, ya know,” Klaus says and winks at her, then gives Allison a quick hug before he walks away.

The two women turn to Diego and he suddenly hesitates. Then he says, “See you around, I guess,” and taps the bar top with his fingers before he also heads away.

“Huh,” Allison says, a bit bemused, but then Lila notices that Diego wasn’t tapping just the surface of the bar but had actually shoved his cocktail napkin towards her. She picks it up and realises that he’s scribbled something on it. It reads ‘come say hi’ and then what she presumes must be a room number underneath.

“I thought you said Klaus was the one with the reputation,” Lila says, her mouth’s gone a bit dry as she turns around to Allison to show her the napkin.

“Huh! Never thought that grumpy asshole had it in him.” Allison intones almost more to herself. “You must have really impressed him,” she says to Lila then, with a bit of a laugh in her voice.

“Mmmh, but I mean, obviously I can’t go up there... right?” Lila says hesitantly, not quite sure she knows how she wants Allison to respond.

“I mean, obviously I’m a married woman, so maybe I’m the wrong person to ask, but I can only tell you it happens all the time, so I’d say go for it,” Allison offers with a shrug.

“Nah, I really shouldn’t, but I do think I'll also head to bed now. It was really nice flying with you Allison, even if things got a bit weird.” Lila says to Allison with a smile and a wave.

“Yeah, was great flying with you, too. I’m sure we’ll have many more opportunities to do so!” Allison responds as Lila starts walking away.

Then Lila stops, pivots on her heels, picks up the napkin and then whines a “shut uuuup!” at Allison when the other woman bursts out laughing.

#otp: just be gentle #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #dielila #diego x lila #diego/lila #tua #the umbrella academy #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #david castañeda #lochrannn lxd au challenge

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