#oc: jo brandt

[shoshimakesstuff]

"AFTERNOON, CAPTAIN"

@shoshiwrites' Jo + Egan — read more here.

#if you see me using the same pic that cam just used in her gorgeous graphic and that i've used before no you didn't #oc: jo brandt #...do i have a work tag for this #if you see me captioning like this isn't for my own fic no you didn't

[shoshiwrites]

Into The Wind

I thought it might be fun to take my WarCo OC Jo, normally featuring in a Band of Brothers WIP, on a little field trip to Thorpe Abbots — no background knowledge necessary (I hope!) ♡

“See, they come in here, right, like we all learned how to do this for fun-”

“Did though, didn’t we?”

She leans against the doorframe, silent, the huddle of jackets and collars faced away from her.

The back of his hand flies out to lightly whack his friend on the arm. “Besides the point, Buck- hey- anyway, comes in here like he can fly our planes- like he’s got any idea-”

“Heard this one’s a dame though-”

He pauses. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Dunno why else Harding would be on the phone talking through his teeth about women’s facilities-”

“We got Tatty and Helen and the rest of ‘em, don’t we?”

“I’m just sorry for the poor bastards who have to listen to him next. Mr. Kalamazoo Dispatch. Think he’ll ditch the jacket?”

“The last thing we need is another reporter. Struttin’ around, getting in our business-”

“Right, there can only be one strut-er, one peacock around here-”

“Right.”

It’s not a surprise, not even a little. But she’s hardly leaving now, not with the strings someone had yanked to get her here. Maybe they wanted you for a reason. After Mr. Easy As Pie, in his leather jacket. It sits in her stomach like a stone. Her eyes refocus to the light streaming through the windows, the dust motes and the papers tacked to the walls. The tap of her shoe when she shifts her weight catches the ear and then the eye of one, and then the entire group. 

All eyes, on her. 

The one who’d been talking turns around, and she has no choice to but to walk towards the table. Guess you’re not leaving now, are you? He blinks like they’ve conjured her out of thin air.

A few ma’ams, the scrape of a chair foot.

“Would you call that a strut?” she asks. “Need to know if I should be careful.”

What the fuck, Jo?

She’s sure she sees the one next to him look amused, the tiniest tip-up of his mouth. 

He looks up at her, eyes stopping at her shoulders, the collar of her blouse and the tiny hoops in her ears glinting in the light. Like he’s daring her to argue with his assessment, just a little. “Just as long as you’re not looking for a ride on any practice missions.”

The words hang there like fruit past picking. Someone snorts. 

“No, I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.” He smiles, halfway to a smirk. It warms his eyes. “So, what’s your name, sunshine?”

The Clarion hadn’t been printing it — she was Your Special Correspondent, which she’d pressured them to change from Your Trusty Correspondent. They were angling for Your Girl Overseas. But, she had to go for something, right? How could she expect the same from them, otherwise?

“Jo Brandt.”

He goes like popcorn around the table, introducing — the quiet one is Major Cleven. Douglass. Blakely. Cruikshank. And he’s Major Egan. “You can call me Bucky.”

“Major Egan.”

He gives a theatrical huff. All legs, in that chair. Smiling, like something’s a foregone conclusion. His eyes dart to the class ring on her finger, her left hand. She’s got another security briefing at the top of the next hour, and it’s almost a relief. 

“My apologies for the interruption, gentlemen,” she says, even though it’s hardly one. “Please continue your meal.” They're already done anyway, she can see that, the haphazard silverware and empty coffee cups. 

“We’ll be seeing you, though, right?” he calls, even before she’s turned to go. “Around?”

“Yes. As long as I don’t strut?”

He’s still smiling. “Yes, ma’am.”

She can hear the mutters as she walks back out, the sound of at least one man getting elbowed in the ribs. “I wouldn’t say no-”

The breeze outside brings a chill through her, the smell of damp spring and grass deadened by the winter. She has a uniform to get made, back in London. No more homemade blouses, the ones with embroidery. No flight jackets, either. She doesn’t know who she’ll be to them, not yet, but she knows who she doesn’t want to be.

#????? officer i have never seen this woman before in my life #masters of the air #i don't even have a tag for this #motaverse #jo's tag #shoshi writes #thank you friends for indulging me #and esp. to mercurygray for her egan voice -if you're not reading her ocs what are you doing??

[mercurygray]

It's still Wednesday, right?

Current UnFinished (Writing) Objects:

-Rosie/Molly dinner -Cord got shot down AU -first OT3 thing -second OT3 thing (for different three) -remaining inbox prompts (8)

This week's Spare Ideas Junk Drawer:

third OT3 thing (for STILL ANOTHER diff three, @basilone knows what she did)

Fitje Pitts writes a lot about how female reporters always seemed to stay over with the clubmobile. @shoshiwrites' Jo Brandt writing a feature on Fred.

Postwar Eileen/Egan publicity meeting for her new film

Letter for @steph-speaks' Sincerely Yours project. (Marion? I kind of want to do a non-romantic one.)

Marion and Red deal with Harding's departure (and Red confesses a lil crush?)

Gale Cleven as Captain America. "Who the hell is Bucky" hits a lil different in this fandom. (I just keep coming back to the line, okay?) This might be a text post more than a fic.

Better instructions or ideas for the Blind Dates OC crossover fest

As usual, shout if you see something you like.

#wip wednesday #mercurygraypresents

[rosies-riveters]

do any of your mutuals (or people you follow!) have OCs that you really like or want to know about? I love seeing everyone get so creative with their ideas for MOTA LOL

Oh anon! There are SO MANY, SO SO MANY. And tons I haven't read yet! I have missed so much while being away and now I've gotta go back to everyones masterposts and read them all.

I do have a bunch of fics saved in my likes which I'll start sharing under the tag #fic recs so keep an eye out for that. Also, if there are any you'd like to share, please do! I am here FOR ALL OF IT.

But in the meantime:

@shoshiwrites - Jo Brandt. Girl has got it bad for Bucky and now sho's got me thinking about her every day! Bucky teaching Jo how to drive stick shift? SHUT UP. ADORABLE.

@mercurygray- Marion Brennan. This is a grown ass woman who knows what she wants and I am living for it.

@softspeirs Grace Fleming. I know people seem to be reluctant to read about nurses, but honestly, they get shit done and I love Grace & Rosie.

but omg there are literally so many! I've loved everyone I've read so far! So keep 'em coming! Feel free to tag me IN ALL THE THINGS.

#i am not good with words folks #that's why i don't write #but i can tell you whose writing i do like #also i'm an old lady and am having a hard time keeping track #of everyone's OC's and the posted stories #i gotta do like shosh and start a spreadsheet #emaasks*

[basilone]

Those of you who’ve been following my writing adventures will know I’m working on a multichapter fic that features several Soviet OCs. It’s still a long way away before I can share this fic with you, but I can grab this opportunity to let you all say hello to its main character who’s going to share a whole lot of screentime with Speirs.. 

.. and we’re doing this for a grand occasion, too! Happy birthday, @shoshiwrites​, and big love to you for being awesome. 💙 Thank you for letting me borrow your Jo for this one! She is a treat to work with and I’m so happy to get to gift you this. Your reporter lady is a true delight. 😊

agreement

The office is not an afterthought this time. It had been one at Toccoa, where they’d wedged her desk between supplies and the wall and had barely left room for her chair, and it’d been one in Aldbourne, where they’d given her a table but then commandeered use of said table for more maps. During the fighting, her office had been makeshift: nothing but one foxhole, often invaded by the chattiest soldiers, and a battered notebook propped up on her lap.

Jo Brandt doesn’t need much to be able to do her job. She’s a full-fledged reporter now – one with regular articles, one with reader responses that still take her by surprise – and she got there primarily by jabbing her pen at soldiers until they stopped waffling and started talking. Even now, at war’s end, she is still writing stories for the homefront as though they’re not out of the woods just yet.

She sucks in a breath, then exhales it with only a mild shudder. Austria’s the closest thing she’s felt to freedom – no mortar whistles, no smoke and ash, no steady pops of gunfire – but this office seems like it doesn’t fit. The space itself grows beyond desk and chair to include a settee, a wall-to-wall shelving situation that contains more books than she’s ever going to have the time to read, and not one but two windows that overlook the lake.

It’s not so bad when there’s other people present. Chuck and Pat can fill the room with gossip and “Jo, you have no idea, this thing just came outta nowhere”, Babe can melodramatically tip back onto the settee and complain about troop reviews for the better part of an hour while mimicking Speirs’s voice with a Philly accent, and Nixon likes to mask his check-ins as a social call that fools neither one of them. She likes the stories that come out now that the fear dissipates from their speech – stories about their childhood, about loves won and lost, about hopes and dreams – almost as much as she likes the stupid jokes they reserve just for her.

They’re all trying to pick up the fragments of what war left behind. Of what was ruined, or feels close to snapping and breaking under some yet unseen strain, somewhere deep down inside where even the light from these windows can’t reach. She’s heard the fractures in Liebgott’s voice to the point where a mere whisper of it sends footsteps cantering down the hallway toward his bedroom. She’s seen the hollow nature of it reflected back at her through Speirs’s eyes before his shoulders pull into a ramrod straight line that she still hasn’t been able to mimic. She spies it, sometimes, within herself when she is alone and spinning on her chair as if she means to challenge the tug-of-war that takes place in her stomach.

Some days, not even the laughter that streams through open windows and open door is enough to mask the absence of the one voice she dreams of in the best and worst of nights.

Jo sighs as she files the last of the typed pages into a folder. This particular article has been read and re-read by the Airborne half a dozen times before finally meeting approval, which is a scrutiny that doesn’t sit well with her. The agreement has always been to write as she sees fit, with due understanding that she cannot make them look bad, but this latest situation has sent their wheels spinning on what sort of message to send home. On how to explain the near-impossible in words that don’t upset anyone, really, which has led her to weigh and measure more than before.

After all, how does one explain the presence of ten Soviet soldiers in the heart of the American part of Austria’s territory?

The thing that stings is that she’s been kept separate from these new arrivals to the best of anyone’s ability, as if she hasn’t grown used to navigating the military’s myriad policies and blending into the background of whatever they have going on. Major Winters had almost stopped to include her at one point, but one glance from Nixon later and she’d been rather regretfully waved off. Speirs is no better, though she thinks she knows the set of the man’s shoulders well enough to be able to read supreme annoyance about the whole situation in it. Word of mouth – according to Babe, which is really as good as gospel – is that they’re concerned about upsetting the Soviets with what these soldiers might call Western propaganda.

Jo scoffs. Shuts the folder and tosses it onto the far side of her desk. The little interaction she’s had with the Soviets has been limited to their sniper, who has steadily been crossing the lines set for her unit from the moment she got here. Katya, as she’d introduced herself with a crooked little smile and dimpled cheeks, had simply parked herself on a lawn chair next to Jo one time and begun asking all sorts of questions about life in the States as if she was truly hoping to see it for herself someday. As if it doesn’t matter that new lines are already forming that put the United States at odds with the Soviet Union, just like Harry Welsh had blearily predicted between one drink and the next back at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, and they could all just be friends by the end of it anyway.

Talbert had certainly taken the offer of friendship to new levels, which Katya had giggled about in a really conspiratorial way that had made Jo like the girl just that much more. Listening to Katya’s English mixed with blurry Russian terms somehow called back memories of Clara, chatting up a storm in English but jabbing Portuguese into the middle for extra emphasis, who’d probably laugh just as hard about Talbert’s lack of dancing skills as Katya had. Katya hadn’t even blinked at the appearance of Jo’s notebook and pen, instead opting to regale her with some funny story about a stand-off with a fish in a Siberian lake back home, and there’s an article lurking in the pages now that she hasn’t bothered to show to the Airborne brass just yet.

“Are you reporter?”

Jo blinks as she swivels around in her chair to face the door. The slightly hoarse, deeper voice is one she’s only heard directed at anyone but her. It’s issued orders and commands with all the snap of someone used to being obeyed in an instant, no questions asked, and she’s heard it rise into a near-feral scream behind the closed door of Speirs’s office on at least two occasions. Right now, though, it’s only careful. Measured. Accompanied by a mild raised eyebrow, as though the woman it belongs to is challenging her to dispute the question.

“Yes, I am,” she replies evenly.

“Good.”

How is that good? is at war with why are you closing the door to my office?, which leads Jo to sigh and lean back in her chair instead. No amount of asking questions is going to lead this Soviet captain into answering them freely, after all, and she’ll be damned if she lets on anything about the nervous little swoop that travels through her belly when the door clicks shut altogether. She’s heard the stories – first from Nixon, then from Chuck, and finally from Katya Sokolova – about this captain who seems to treat the world as if the war hasn’t ended at all and who’s got more rumors following in her wake than even Speirs does.

“Your captain doesn’t want this.” Tatiana Petrova keeps her voice mild, almost as if she is discussing the weather, but such obvious distaste curls her lip a moment at the word captain that Jo sees confirmation of how much the woman dislikes Speirs in the expression. Her hand, all bruised knuckles and dark-rimmed nails, lands on Jo’s desk. “He said you have article about my unit being here. I want to know.”

“If captain Speirs doesn’t want it, ma’am..”

Jo lets the words hang in the air a moment. She harbors no illusion that the Soviet captain is going to heed them as a warning, but makes no move that could betray the whereabouts of the article either. If Speirs already said no, then Jo isn’t about to make that no into a yes.

The blonde waves an impatient hand. “You call me Tatiana, yes? He doesn’t like it when I talk. I told him, is American propaganda to stop me talking to reporter.” A grin breaks through the frown that marred her features only a few seconds ago. Her light eyes spark to life along with her gravelly laugh. “I told him Katya talked to you. He sighed so bad, I thought he was going to blow papers off his desk. Big whoosh, you know?”

“I can imagine,” laughs Jo, used as she is to Speirs’s disgust at being kept out of the loop on anything. She tilts her head slightly as the Soviet captain drops rather unceremoniously into the free chair and props her boots up on the desk as if this is her office instead of Jo’s. Makes one of the snapshot decisions that got her through the war in one piece soon after, even though the woman’s name feels foreign on her tongue, and decides to reciprocate in kind. “Please, call me Jo. What do you want to know, Tatiana?”

The shrug is casual. A slight frown is back on Tatiana’s face now, in this silence, as her fingers fidget with the frayed cuff of her sleeve. The words that follow are careful, almost hedging, and the Soviet captain studies the ceiling more than she does Jo.

“If you want to have drink with my people.”

“They’ve been trying to keep me away from your people.”

“And you got here because you listen to everyone but yourself?” The captain’s gaze is piercing, now, as she drops her study of the bland ceiling and fixes Jo with something that feels akin to a steel trap instead. A faint smile tugs at the woman’s mouth. “Katya said you listen. Is all I ask, share drink and listen to scary communists.”

“I don’t think you’re scary.” The admission’s out of Jo’s mouth before she can bite it back. There was a time she would’ve been intimidated by this captain, but she’s stared into worse eyes and met with more violence than even Tatiana can contain. She takes a deep breath. Takes the plunge. “I’d love to hear your stories. Katya had so many” – she shakes her head at how non-stop the girl’s speech had been – “and most of them weren’t about the war.”

“Nobody wants to hear about war. Or talk about it.” Tatiana’s eyes harden. Her gesture, though dismissive, is far from uncontrolled. “We will tell you about home. About life before fascists came.” She spits the word fascists out as if she can maul the Nazis with nothing but her sharp tongue and the bite of the word. “I want you to know why we fight so long. So hard. Why we..”

“Why you are angry with us.”

Jo almost thinks she overstepped. Tatiana’s eyes flicker a moment with something she can’t read, which takes her aback ever so slightly. She hasn’t met many closed books in recent years – fear and homesickness open anyone up to sharing – but this woman plays her cards dangerously close to her chest. Then, there is a small nod of agreement.

“You will publish.” It’s not a question. It doesn’t really need to be. “Write stories we tell you – don’t listen to Kolya too much, he will tell you twenty different versions – and share them. Don’t use our names. Or photos. Just stories.”

“Why do you trust me to tell them?”

“Katya. She says you are in fight. You lose people like we do.” Tatiana’s words are matter of fact. Not designed to hurt, though the sting of loss jabs a fierce ache into her heart regardless, and it’s then that she knows Katya will have found the words for how lost in the woods Jo still feels at times. “She says you are honest. I trust what she says.”

“Thank you.”

“Pozhaluysta.”

The woman shrugs in acknowledgment. Her countenance brightens in the next seconds, as though the weight she normally carries abruptly fell off her shoulders. She looks younger than Jo, now, and perhaps she is even when she has assumed command and killed with outright impunity in a way that befits someone older and more worldly than she.

She grips Tatiana’s proffered hand tightly, as if they are sealing this deal with a mere handshake instead of the carefully drawn contract the American Army made her sign years ago. The captain’s nod certainly seems to be affirmation enough before her warm and calloused hand withdraws from Jo’s grasp again.

“Ah, now you and I can –”

The door flies open before Tatiana can finish her sentence. It slams against the wall with a firm smack, then bounces back slightly until it meets an outstretched arm. Jo freezes in place at the sound as well as at the glower that is written all over captain Speirs’s face. Tatiana’s boots, however, merely sweep off the desk in response and land back on the floor with a dull thud. The roll of her eyes is almost a bodily affair, with supreme annoyance written into her head’s movement as well as into the new set of her shoulders, and she begins to rise out of her chair.

Speirs’s hand clamps firmly around her upper arm before she can rise altogether. She’s out of the chair in a flash as he drags her upward. Her right hand uselessly scrambles on the desk for purchase a moment before she snarls a low, fevered Russian word that can only be a curse and locks her hand tightly around his collar instead. Her fingers wrap around his throat and rest there.

“Let. Go.” Tatiana’s voice is frosty. Her eyes are chips of ice. “Or I squeeze.”

Jo rises to her feet at the threat. “Not in my office,” she says, lacing her voice with something she hopes is stern warning. She glances at Speirs’s remarkably unperturbed face. Exhales noisily, then summons whatever courage she can muster. “Captain Petrova and I were in the middle of a conversation, sir. She invited me for drinks with her company.” Jo pauses a moment. Weighs how far she can go before offering another opinion. “I think you should let go of her.”

Speirs’s grip loosens, but his hand remains on Tatiana’s sleeve all the same. Her fingers slip to his collar in response and come to rest around the captain’s bar. His eyes blaze with barely contained fury, which doesn’t seem to impress her any.

“We talked about this,” he says, then, and Jo may as well not be in the room with them at all with the way Tatiana goes utterly still at his words. “I told you yesterday that I would talk to Major Winters and see about you speaking with Miss Brandt here. Today, I find you here. An invitation to share drinks, Petrova, really..”

“You always take forever.” If Jo didn’t know better, she’d almost call Tatiana’s tone pouting. “You say you need to ask this person and that person, and then they need to talk to another person, and that person goes to..” She throws both hands into the air in clear and obvious frustration. His hand slips from her arm. “I said yesterday that you can come share drink too. You will know what is said. What is not said.” A shrug. Another roll of her eyes, more deliberate this time. “I promise I will not poison drink, yes? You come with Jo, you have good time, get stick out of your ass, we all win.”

Jo’s mouth quirks up at the very American-sounding description that is delivered so triumphantly as the decisive factor in this. “I suppose that Tab and Chuck and some of the others will be there, too?” she asks, knowing full well that some of Easy’s men have formed a tentative understanding with the Soviets that’s primarily built around alcohol consumption. “No harm in you joining us, sir. I’ve been promised stories about life in the Soviet Union and think they might benefit the article somewhat. Show people that we’re getting along here, right?”

“See, we are friends now,” says Tatiana, as if her hand wasn’t wrapped around Speirs’s throat mere minutes ago. She reaches out and pats his cheek. “You and me on same side, remember?”

“Believe me when I say that is difficult to forget.” Speirs’s tone is dry. He nearly flinches away from Tatiana’s touch, though the fire in his gaze has dimmed just a little, and he raises his eyes to the ceiling a moment in obvious supplication to whatever heavenly powers can intercede here. His exhale is noisy. His disapproval clear. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re going to do as you like regardless of what I have to say about it?”

“Ah, see,” says Tatiana, smile flashing bright on her face as she turns toward Jo, “I told you, we are friends now. Your captain knows me! We’re decided, yes? You come for drinks tonight, Jo,” she nods, decisive as anything, not even expecting a reply, “and you bring this one with you.” She turns her full smile to Speirs, now, but there’s a feral quality to her gaze that renders it slightly unfriendly. “Maybe I will like you better when you’re drunk, yes?”

“God forbid.”

Jo bites back a laugh at Speirs’s immediate retort. She has never seen Speirs lose any modicum of control save for the time she saw him throw a paperweight at this woman before the door to his office swung shut. She can’t imagine the man drunk – he can hold his liquor, breaking up a fight with casual aplomb back in Aldbourne despite being five pints into his evening – and she certainly can’t imagine him cutting loose around the Soviets now.

Tatiana seems to know as much, too, because the wink she sends Jo can be called downright conspiratorial before she steps back altogether. Jo remembers to nod assent – yes, I’ll be there, will do my best to drag him there too – before the woman vanishes from the room altogether. There’s really no refuting the Soviet captain once she’s got her sights set on something, or so she has been told, and Jo feels a little queasily bulldozed by the quickness of the agreement.

“Brandt.” Speirs sounds as calm as ever, though his eyes flicker with a certain restlessness. “Take a breath. See if you can get anything out of Petrova tonight that’s not useless insults directed at my person.”

Jo inhales. Shakes her head once she realizes what he means. “You don’t think she’s going to talk, sir?”

“I think that woman says exactly what she means to say and no more than that.”

“You don’t trust her.” She’s not asking, not really, but his nod still takes her aback. She raises her chin in response. “I am not going there with an agenda, sir.”

“You’re not. I am. Listen to what they tell you. Ask your questions.”

“And you’ll listen to the omissions,” she understands, then.

“Does that bother you?”

Yes, she almost says, because the war is done and we’ve been hurt enough already. “I think she’ll expect you to,” she warns instead. Her mouth quirks into a smile. “Who knows, sir, she might just succeed in her ploy to get you drunk instead.”

He shrugs. “As long as you don’t put that in print.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she promises, though in the back of her head she notes the byline of the two captains on both sides huddled together over drinks and talking like old friends as though she can wish it into existence.

#band of brothers #jo brandt #oc: tatiana #ronald speirs #basilonefic #writing20202021

[shoshimakesstuff]

WENDY COPE

#i realize i've made this graphic before with literally that cap but. #why not #oc: jo brandt #wip: when the war came #should i have filtered all the b&w the same. possibly. but the first was already b&w so it wouldn't have looked the same

[shoshimakesstuff]

WHEN THE WAR CAME — @shoshiwrites

#i wanted to make a toye thing but it got too late #and i found this in my canva drafts #I don't like it as much as the one I made for Lou (@floydmtalbert's oc) but #also ignoring the fact that the spelling of her name will most likely change #considering i knew nothing about german pronunciation in checks notes high school #nevermind that the title might also likely change. #anyway i'm writing a toye/warco oc her name is josie and i love her #her fic (rewrite) is in progress and i share posts/snippets/prompts in that tag #and way more stuff/aus/etc in her tag #would mean the world if any oc readers wanted to check her out #and she has other oc friends! #wip: when the war came #oc: jo brandt

[shoshimakesstuff]

coloring by the beautiful @basilone 💚💙 b/w psd

#oc: jo brandt #using caps/shoots ive used a million times <3 now and forever <3 #i know theyre mine but....them #wip: when the war came

[shoshimakesstuff]

#oc: jo brandt #do i know how caption anything? no #using her nickname because i'm still up in the air on how to spell her first name. you'd think i just invented her #wip: when the war came

[shoshimakesstuff]

#lol i hate this #but im just. in a mood and wanted to make something for my babe #oc: jo brandt #wip: when the war came

[shoshimakesstuff]

🚗 the au where lou and jo take a road trip 🚗

#<333 #oc: louise johnson #oc: jo brandt #arethosedustyjumpwings #floydmtalbert

[shoshimakesstuff]

Maybe it’s the cold or maybe it’s the whiskey that has her wanting to say something, everything, but all she says is, “are they still looking?”

#...was i using a fic tag? #whatever #oc: jo brandt

[shoshimakesstuff]

"Tell the pretty lady here where you're from."

#oc: jo brandt #wip: when the war came

[shoshimakesstuff]

Paul Hostovsky

#genuinely no idea #sometimes we make things that are just Vibes #that are supposed to be for our people but then we make no indication as such #wip: when the war came #sort of. also probably a few au tags #oc: jo brandt

[shoshiwrites]

my dear, I'd like to submit a Touches prompt: "#35 grabbing the other's hand to pull them back to them" for anyone who tickles your fancy. just need that sorta passion in my life 🥹

I just want to apologize for the fact that this actually is not entirely the prompt, but was 100% inspired by it — I owe you one ❤️ Bucky Egan/War correspondent OC, also on Ao3! Set a little bit after this prompt. Featuring Jo with some new mail and Bucky having some thoughts and feelings about that.

The Clarion starts running her picture with the new pieces. 

She doesn’t hate it, but at the same time it doesn’t quite look like her, the posed portrait she’d sat for in London with her hair pinned back her uniform pressed. She’s more herself in the photos Kay takes, under the cloudy English skies. But she can’t argue with it either — a uniform means something official, and isn’t that what they’re working for? To be taken seriously, to get what the boys are given without having to fight tooth and nail for it, without jokes about lipstick or hair products or a million other things on top of it.

The problem with the picture now, though, is that everyone knows who she is. Not a celebrity, that idea is laughable, but named. Josephine R. Brandt, The Clarion’s Woman in England. 

They’re like name-tags too, the adjectives used to describe her and her fellow reporters in bite-sized news items. Marian Brenner is always petite, and Kay is statuesque. Marjory Manning is titian-haired, which always gets a laugh considering Marjory makes no secret that it comes from a bottle. Jo is brunette, and pert. That word always makes Kay choke a little on her cigarette, peering at Jo and the dark circles under her eyes.

She’s spent the last few days amongst the women of the Clubmobile, sleeping in an extra bed dragged in and photographing, rather amateurly, their truck and living quarters. They were much more accommodating to her than they should have been, especially when Jo attempted to work the fryer in the name of journalistic exploration. Thankfully she was much better at cleaning, with no qualms about rolling up her sleeves. 

Her hair still smells like grease as she sits in an empty mess hall, picking at one of her nails and ignoring the stack of letters beside her. Her photographs wouldn’t quite capture what she’d tried to in her writing: the smell of perfume and the lingering fryer grease, hair tonic and newsprint and cold evening air, the blankets and bedrolls and towels hanging, tables with books and magazines and framed photographs, small pots of rouge, rosaries, hair combs and extra socks. A sprig of chicory sitting in a drinking glass, the blue flowers starting to wilt at the edges.

A name. A picture. What she hadn’t been thinking about — fanmail. 

It was ridiculous, the pile Kay had passed along to her in London and the one she was now patently ignoring next to her elbow. Next to a copy of the paper, a newer one with the picture.

She’d always gotten responses to her pieces back home, whether that meant someone arguing with her about a labor statistic she’d quoted or offering their own version of a recipe back when she’d been on the society pages. Now, overseas, with her name and her picture clear as day, it was like a switch had been flipped.

The only thing that she didn’t have to worry about was William.

The ring was sitting at the bottom of her trunk, buried under a sweater. Tatty had offered to run it over with the Clubmobile, but Jo got worried about the tires. Helen had suggested the fryer. A WAC with strawberry blonde hair voted for a storm drain. Biddick had plans that involved Corporal Lemmons and an unknown quantity of explosives. Douglass, inexplicably, had volunteered to make neat work of it on an upcoming mission. She had no idea how he’d even found out. 

Well, she isn’t wearing it anymore, right?

“Thought I’d find you in here.”

She looks up to see Egan making his way through the doors.

“Someone looking for me?”

He glances behind him and smiles, like it’s obvious. “Yeah, me.”

Maybe she knows better by now than to ask what he’s ignoring to be here. Milk run earlier this afternoon. Not flying tomorrow. 

Isn’t it time for beers and darts, right about now?

“Just answering some mail.” Actual mail, from home. Not the other stack. 

Maybe fanmail is a generous term, she thinks. Most of it is opinions, loud, of where she should or shouldn’t be. Home. Doing war work instead if she had to do something. Some less savory suggestions. Being quiet. 

“You’re a popular correspondent,” he says, sitting down across from her. 

She snorts. 

“I’m just seeing that there’s lot of letters here.”

“Astute observation, Major.” But she’s smiling. 

“Friends back home?”

“Yeah. The rest is-” she gestures, almost sighing out the answer in a sudden yawn, the light outside the soft gold of early evening. “I don’t know. People have a lot to say.”

“They do, do they?”

“Sometimes I forget that I’m not just a disembodied voice, is all.”

He looks a little puzzled, but still amused. She throws the paper in front of him, and his eyes catch the column. He whistles. “Front page, huh.”

“They haven’t used a picture before.” She nods back at the stack of letters.

“Oh.” She can’t tell if he’s about to make a joke or not.

“Might just toss them,” she says. They’d be good for the paper pulp if nothing else.

He grabs one off the top, his expression clouding over as he reads.

“They write this kinda stuff to you?” he says after a minute. One of the ones that had ideas about where she should be, namely the writer’s bed. He tosses it down on the table.

She thinks of London, and Norwich, and Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. “They say it, too.”

He exhales, the sour expression still on his face. Like a lemon. “Sure.”

“You didn’t get to the marriage proposals yet.”

“The what?”

“They’re in there, I promise. They’re nicer.” He laughs a little, just this side of bitter. She tries to look offended, tries to lighten the mood. “Maybe I ought to be insulted.”

“No, no, I just-”

“Just what?”

He’s tapping his foot a little, she can feel it under the table. Fidgeting.

“I just feel lucky, is all.” The question of it is clear on her face. Lucky, sure, to go through hell every day and make it back here, to the ground and the summer-faded English fields. “That you’re not just a picture to me.”

Oh.

Something feels caught in her throat; it takes what feels like too many seconds. “You’re awfully sweet.”

“I mean it.” She wishes she had a little crabapple to pick at, something to do with her hands. “Don’t think a picture could’ve kissed that good either-”

She tries to whack the back of her hand against his arm, but he pulls away — hey, too quick — before he leans forward again, pulls her face to his. 

“Not here-” she says, a little too belatedly. He’s grinning, all wolfish. His hands are warm. 

“Will you go dancing with me, then?” 

A place where they can do this, she assumes, out of sight, or amongst a crowd. She says it because it feels like something she should say. “There’s something planned here for the weekend, right?”

He makes a gentle scoffing sound. “Nah, I don’t-”

“What?”

“I mean, sure, but. You know. Just be prepared for me to keep stealing you away, ok?”

“And how will that look?”Her stomach swoops, out of something like nervousness, the feel of him close to her again. 

He looks, maybe, the most boyish she’s seen him. “Like I don’t like sharing.”

Like she makes that space for anyone else. That exception. “You can reserve a spot or two on your dance card for me,” she says, diplomacy betrayed by the half-waver of her voice. 

He assents, not entirely satisfied, but doesn’t try for another kiss. Not here, at least. She feels a chill go through her then, when he pulls away from her, lets go. 

#trying not to overthink things 2k24 #masters of the air oc #mota oc #rosies-riveters #thank you friend <3 #jo's tag #motaverse #shoshi writes #stop telling me amateurly isn't a word i'm saying it's a word

[shoshiwrites]

hospital bed + Jo/Egan >:))))

Continuing my BoB OC Jo's MotA wanderings! From this prompt list. Bucky Egan/WarCo OC. Warnings for non-graphic medical references & non-graphic abuse.

She studies him, the glint of the low light and the drink in his hand, tapping her fingers along the tall glass of cider in hers. “I was…eleven. Got my appendix out.” 

He winces a little, but he’s still smiling. “Sounds like a swell time.”

“Just about.” 

She’s still thinking of the triage section this morning, the light through the thin curtains, the sound of squeaking wheels across the floor. The overwhelming smell of antiseptic underlaid by vomit. 

Silent, watching the doctor move from bed to bed, the stretchers being carried in by boys still in flight gear. The nurses tolerated her as long as she didn’t get in the way, and she didn’t, or tried not to. The last boy she’d seen before she walked back outside was a frostbite injury, so bad that they had to move him to a hospital. It’s warm and humid here, on the ground. Her blouse feels tacky between her shoulders, and at her sides.

And this is something he just does. Major Egan. All of them. Leave in the dark of the morning, and then you’re back here in a pub by late afternoon. Go up so high that if the Germans don’t kill you, taking off a pair of gloves or an oxygen mask will. 

“And how was that?”

She blinks at him. “Getting my appendix out?” 

“Yeah! Still got mine.”

He’d only been telling a story about a high school sports injury, after she’d tried not to look too hard at the new bruise blooming on the apple of his cheek. Someone had gotten mouthy, she wasn’t sure who. He looked like he didn’t want her to ask. 

“All I remember, really, is that it hurt a lot less after, you know? Than it did before.” 

He nods.

“My mother came, and she sat with me, and brought me little sweets, cookies, probably. Leftover spice cookies, from Christmas. I wasn’t in too long.”

“What’s your father do, again?”

“Uh, steelworker,” she says. “Was. In Pittsburgh. He came by, too, right after—”

She doesn’t mean to say that part, to tell a real thing about him. It seems like she’s remembering it wrong, hearing her father tell her she was brave. But she tells John that, like it’s easy to say, by a little light in the corner booth of a pub on the coast of a windswept country. 

And she tells him too about the day she went home, the memory that was more like her father. He’d showed up smelling like plum brandy and berated the nurse, and then her mother. 

He quirks his mouth a little, for a moment, like he wishes he could throw a few more punches. If anyone could fight a spirit, she’d say it was John Egan. 

“And now you’re here,” he says. Like it’s something that makes sense, from a little girl in a hospital bed to a correspondent sitting here, across from him, writing about a blinding freezing blue she’s never seen. Like a kid playing touch football in the mud, going to school with his arm in a sling he hates, to this. Up there, the indescribable sky.

She nods. “And now I’m here.”

A pint glass slides onto the table, and Biddick sidles up, his voice warmed by the beer. “Hey, Major.” He nods at Jo. “Miss Brandt.” The honorific sounds like zz's, in his accent. 

“Hey, now,” Bucky says, smiling. “This lady here’s a captain.”

Jo tries not to make a face. “In name only.” 

“Hey, they oughta know that, right?” Curt says. He jerks his chin towards his friend’s face. “That’ll teach ‘em, right, Buck? To say things about—”

The look Bucky shoots him tells Jo exactly what the fight was about. If they’re calling it that. Something to remind her she shouldn’t be sitting here alone. 

“What? I’m just saying—”

“Can it, Curt. That’s an order.” He doesn’t quite sound like he means it.

“Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. But I think I ought to make this one an early night.”

“Let me walk you out.” 

The sky is still streaked with faded red and peach, still time to get back to her rented room before worrying about the dark. His fingers brush her arm, on the way to the door, but he doesn’t say anything more.

#latibvles #masters of the air oc #mota oc #bucky egan x oc #me realizing they're having a candlelight conversation about an appendectomy #normal things #motaverse #jo's tag #shoshi writes #'mota oc' jo: i am ???? #hi curt miss you curt:'(