Bucky Egan returns from war, without a plan or a place to go but he's home. At least that's what everyone keeps telling him, "be grateful, buck up, smile son, you're alive!"
But he doesn't believe that, until he meets Mabel and everything changes.
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"This is it Major, tomorrow you fly home."
"There isn't a single mission left I might be good for, Sir?" John clenched his jaw and watched as the Colonel rifled through a stack of papers for the third time.
It wasn't that John didn't want to go home. It was that John had nothing to go home to. Gale was going home to Marge and the reminder stung enough to make John bitter. At least here he could keep his hands and mind busy. He'd rather die in the sky than die of boredom on American soil.
"There's nothing, John." He looked up from his papers and sat back in his chair. "You're in the air by 0630, and don't try to find an excuse to stay."
John was ready trying to come up with something. He could dance his way around and into anything but he had a feeling he didn't have any other options to exhaust this time.
"Dismissed Major."
John pushed from his chair with both hands and made his way from the office into the foggy air of Thorpe Abbots. There weren't many bodies left to make the base feel busy but a few familiar faces were kicking around. John tried everyone, begging for a job that he could steal.
"John Egan," Gale's voice hummed from behind him. "Quit harassing the boys."
John turned slowly to look at his best friend with a Cheshire smile plastered on his fox-like face. "I was only chatting with..." he looked at the kid next to him, he had no idea what his name was or his job, and sighed.
"Private Lance," he finished for John. "Sir."
"Private Lance," John cooed and threw his arm around the kid, "and I were just talking about the Yankees."
"Sure" Gale shook his head. "Colonel said you were acting squirrelly."
"Me?" John scoffed, "I'm the picture of cool, calm, and collected."
"It looks a lot more like you're harassing boys for work, Bucky." Gale dropped his gaze, ocean blue eyes meeting John's stormy gray ones.
"I would never do such a thing, and Lance here wouldn't ever give his grunt jobs to a commanding officer. Would you, private?" John asked him.
"No sir," he answered quickly.
"Bucky," Gale sounded off one more warning shot with his calm voice.
The kid beside him shook like a can of nails on take-off and John, for a split second felt bad for him, "off you go Private."
The kid nodded and took off like a bat outta hell away from the two of them and their old fashion stand-off. Gale shoved both hands in his pocket as he made his way over to where John still stood.
"We're going home, Bucky, for a reason. The war is over."
John shifted in his jacket and started to walk in line with Gale as they made their way to the barracks. The war might have been over on paper. The planes came back, the shoulders cleared out, and men were on trial for their crimes but for John; The war was just beginning. Without the constant noise, he could feel everything that he had fought so hard to keep at bay, start to creep in and take control.
