I Love That Gale And Lu Are In The Same Area And Are Close By 🥹🥹 I Love Those Two Babies Sooo Much

i’ll find a new place to be from

It's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

vintage photos of the 100th bomb group made by me 😇

is it weird for me to ask you about your experience getting your nipple piercings 😋 i just followed you for your mota fic and am super excited to read but like. then i saw your recent post and i’m trying to decide if i want to get my nipples pierced before my trip this summer but i’m such a baby about pain so i’m so scared and then i’m also like what an awful place for an infection or anything of the sort 😅

Not weird!! I have them and also work at a piercing shop lmao I have this convo every day with people

With nipple piercings they’re definitely more painful of piercings but like. They’re doable!! We don’t judge if someone curses or yells during them because we’ve been there. Some people say it was awful some people say it was a breeze. They’re the second ones I ever did and tbh I did not go about it the right way and they took a long time to heal! I also did both of mine at once which wasn’t fun but I’m glad I did it that way.

Generally it’s about 8 months to a year for full healing and we want to stay out of any bodies of water (pools, ponds, lakes, oceans, baths) for the first 2 months). Any piercing heals from the outside in so even if it feels great on the outside it could still be an open wound or a scab on the inside!

We pierce with a long bar to account for swelling and any ethical piercer will want you to come in after 4-6 weeks to downsize the bar to allow for continued healing. What you want to look for when going to a studio/piercer is someone who is APP certified! That’s like the national/international violation of ethical piercers. Safepiercing.org has a map on it if you put in your zipcode it will tell you all the APP studios in your area. They will also walk you through all the risks and aftercare

Bring a friend! Have them hold your hand! They’re worth it in the end

“Normal” test results are not the relief people think they are. When you wake up in pain and continue to be in pain for hours every day and your tests come back normal you don’t stop being in pain.

|| College

Warnings: 18+, general universe warnings apply, angst, small amount of fluff

Circa: late autumn of 1945

Summary: Lt. Tallulah Smith applies herself to get a degree in engineering- a thing she already knows all too well

Note of thanks to my girl and mutual, Ole Blue Eyes, for being my proof reader, all mistakes are my own 🌻 this isn’t very accurate for college admissions shhhh

The admissions officer stares down at her application and Lu follows his eyeline to the crisply reprinted identification card. The rank of lieutenant proceeds her name where a simple “Miss” would have four year before, because everything about her has changed in four years, including her name and her need for college: she has many friends who insist she will learn nothing here, nothing new compared to what she knew best in a fort, that those credentials should wait and she should go home. Regroup, recover, get an idea for what she wants now her life is her own once more.

It’s an off putting sort of ownership.

But it is hers now, and she wants to go to college, because for right now, she could do this and it’ll merely look like a long gap year to anyone who questions her age. She just took a brief sabbatical and now she’s back, home has nothing to do with it.

Tallulah doesn’t want to go home, and not because she is not convinced home is as wonderful as she remembers but rather, because it is wonderful she would pollute it the moment she stepped back over the cattle gate and brought in her darkened memory and her wretched reputation.

The admissions officer, a very repeatable, sedate, academic man named Mr. Daniels, had a daughter in the army. He tells Lu as much right away, as an ice breaker upon taking her papers from her and sitting at his desk, and if he equates the bronze skinned woman before him with the one in last month’s news, he makes a good show of not doing so. Lu sits opposite and thinks of Ida. The thought prickles in her armpit, pure guilt. It’s a welcome sensation to the stilted numbness of sitting here while Mr. Daniels gives her excellent commendations a cursory glance, like they’re both playing a game that maybe she won’t get accepted.

They both know she will, unless the school doesn’t want someone with her newly tarnished reputation-

“Says here you had extensive service on bombers, radio operator and electrical engineer.” Mr. Daniels has gone deep, deeper than Lu’s careful mis-shuffling of her pages this morning had intended for him to.

“Yes sir.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Impressive. Stateside or over there?”

“Both really, trained over here, served over there.”

“You were quite young.”

Lu tries to give him a grin, he probably expects her to be as hot blooded and eager as the day she signed up, it’s what’s expected of soldiers who come back. She learned that real quickly, there’s nothing anyone likes less than a dour veteran. “Too young for college so it seemed like a good endeavor, I wanted engineering experience.” It’s a decent amount truth and her tongue doesn’t freeze with it so she says it and he laughs and it’s all good, it’s all as it’s supposed to be when someone gets back from a war and says it was a cakewalk and everyone back at home says they thought as much and agrees there should be more cakewalks in the world and the equilibrium of peace is restored.

“Bet you got it- the experience.” He is still chuckling and he goes back to reading her papers, leaving Lu with a paranoid unease about his tacked on last bit, the experience bit, everything these days feels like a double entendre and she wishes to Jesus she could claw out of this skin that knows too much and sees it everywhere now she does.

Electrical engineering. Experience. She used the word first when this meeting began, he’s just agreeing. He finds her funny, he’s not mocking, he finds her funny and brash, that’s a good thing, he admires her experience, in engineering— Lu forcibly talks herself down from bolting from the room.

She’s taken too long to reply. Her armpits sting.

“Doesn’t say whi-“ Mr. Daniels pauses his sentence and reshuffles some pages himself, but convinced he’s not overlooked what he’s asking about, he begins again, “-you in Wasps? WAFs? Doesn’t say. Odd.”

It doesn’t matter, she’s going to college and she’s smart enough to pass and not waste time and she’s got money to pay for it, it doesn’t matter. Why would he ask— they must be accumulating brownie points for how many service men and women they send through, that must be it.

Lu takes a breath and makes herself answer in a somewhat timely manner- “Air Force, sir.”

Mr. Daniels gives her a somewhat flattering look of confusion, less like he’s confused and more like he expected her not to be so dense. “Yeah, but in what corps?”

“I was- active, sir, Air Force, bomb squadron.”

The papers hit the desk with a snap, genuine and pure surprise on his face. “Integrated? You were part of the 100th experiment?”

An experiment is something you test out, an experiment is something that stands alone without its conclusions and results mentioned. Their experiment had results, their experiment was a success, their experiment was no experiment at all.

Lu thinks of Ida, of leaving Cleven’s wedding without saying goodbye to her and the sharp slice of hate at herself for that cowardice cuts through the fog and gives her an answer for him, “Yes sir.” she can at least be proud of it, she is still, they’ve not been able to crush that too. They’re all still proud.

Mr Daniels looks, gratefully, impressed if a little over worked, “Gee whiz that’s amazing. I- I’d shake your hand but I don’t know if that would be proprietary and all that but, gee, consider your hand shaked, lieutenant.”

Lu smiles back and takes her first real breath of the interview, sweat trickling down her ribs, making her grateful she forwent a girdle today. That would be one more little facade of normalcy she is not apparently advanced enough to assume without detection. It’s going to be fine, it’s all fine and then Mr. Daniels’ face gets a funny look to it and it’s one Lu is beginning to recognize and her body braces again before her mind can unravel the fear.

Lu doesn’t know whether she wants to give him credit for the way he pauses before he asks it, pauses like he knows it’s not his business, or dock away a point from his imaginary score for the fact he gave it thought and still went on. “Were you -“ she knows what’s next, maybe he senses it because what he asks next doesn’t suit in grammar or tone with what had proceeded it- “how many missions?”

Such a benignly damning question. “Twenty three.” she replies, because they’d gone down at twenty three, their left wing torn off, fire in the belly and oxygen cut, couldn’t fall out or bail or salvo right away despite the fire because Jack and Bucky and their poor Zig Zag were still right beneath them, slowly belching out parachutes and stuck in a death spiral.

Terminated within minutes of each other, Jack never knew his sister got shot down until she appeared in camp. But Lu had known, Graham and Ida were saying on the coms it was no good, Crank had to take squadron lead and never mind the target, they had to salvo the bombs before the fire got to them and Lu had hung her head out the dead gunner’s window and saw one of their own right under them. Didn’t take a genius to guess who, it was their squadron lead of before, it was Jack and Bucky. So they didn’t salvo any bombs. Grahame and Ida got out of the burning fort through the windshield. Lu remembers thinking about slicing herself on the wings when she jumped, in God’s mercy she didn’t.

Mr. Daniels had asked her a question.

“I’m sorry?”

He smiled, gently, almost apologetic. “So- were you downed?”

Twenty three missions, -‘no sir they thought we did enough damage and sent us home to sunbathe’.- that was Maureen’s voice in her head this time and Lu felt her lips twitch, she probably looked nuts giggling at that question.

“I was.”

“And taken prisoner?” He sounded more and more impressed, also interested.

The prickle had begun to throb, right down into her breast. “I was.”

Mr. Daniels seemed to give some thought to his next question, and asked it anyway, “So you were- one of the ones who, who were held without rank, who were-“

Beaten, raped, fed to dogs, kept naked in the cold, denied their status. The question wasn’t ever if she was a prisoner, it was if she was one of those sorts of prisoners, one with a story more salacious than barbed wire and rotten spuds. Each time she was asked this it felt like the same question, no matter how kindly or earnestly put: exactly how ruined are you, Miss Smith?

He’d gone quiet, maybe because of shame in his own curiosity, maybe because he had finished his question and she still sat there mute, maybe because her face and her history actually scared him now he knew what she had endured and how little his intimidating little credential sign and slick polished maple wood desk really was to her.

“Does it matter, sir?” she decided to ask, he seemed a good enough sort of person to ask, she’d wanted to ask each of the others but had been too ashamed, afraid, dismal in the awareness everyone knew anyway, they could smell it off her.

A chastened expression crumpled his face and he shook his head, fast and severe, “No miss, you’re right, it doesn’t. Doesn’t at all. Except I’m sure you’ll find college to be very easy indeed.”

She took the olive branch, the conciliatory smile and reference to her purpose here, and the rest of the interview remained strictly academic.

Leaving that building felt like freedom. The only rub was that if she got accepted, she’d need to go back in there for another couple years of her life. Maureen was waiting in the car at the curb, as everyone didn’t seem eager to lend her a car yet and so she was forced to accept chauffeuring. She could thank Benny and Jack and their dramatics for that, likely. And her own lack of a license.

“How was it?” Maureen asks her when she finally slips into the passenger seat, eyes still trained on the ivy covered brick that was likely to become her prison. The library at least had been delightful.

“Ever feel like everyone wants to ask you the most humiliating questions imaginable, no matter the context?” Lu blurted, realizing she felt angry, not nervous- angry. She was going to get accepted, no GI Bill required, she had the experience to best all other applicants, it wasn’t even about smarts, it was about literal years of credentials.

In a shell-pitted tin can, no less.

Maureen looked mildly surprised, who knows if it was over the question or the anger. “Y-yes. It’s been a bit that way since getting home, it seems. Who’s ass do I need to warm?”

It hadn’t even been that bad. But if the administrative branch was that nosy, what could she expect of the rest, even her classmates? “It wasn’t that bad. How was your mother?”

“Delightfully unaware of herself —or me.” Maureen shifted the car in an enviably smooth motion, scarred hands tucked into charmingly stuffy white gloves for their new, scrubbed, discharged personas, “Do you think it’s going to make the atmosphere unbearable? Are you up to trying somewhere else? I’ll drive you-“

“No.” Lu unlatched the heavy glove compartment and dug for the pack of chewing gum she was sure Cleven had stashed, “I think Yale makes for a tidy stamp on the top of a resume. Four letters, a symmetry to it, you know? If it was seven or five I’d get upset with it in time. It’s tidy.”

“Tidy, huh?” Maureen echoed with fondness, “Yale, because it’s tidy, sure- you put us all to shame Smith.”

“Your offer still stands to drive me?”

“Of course, anywhere.”

Lu popped the spearmint in and felt a genuine smile tug at the edges of her lips at the thought of a new quest; it might’ve been the first smile of today, and that was a sore feeling. To have had so little reason to smile out and about in this place. “Drive me to the DMV?”

Only Maureen’s eyes moved, a skittering sideways glance at her, only an instant of neglect for the road. “Really?”

“How else am I gonna drive around? You gonna chauffeur me to school every day? Will Bucky?”

“He would.”

Lu wouldn’t be able to bear such nearness, such hovering. Her groan must’ve spoke volumes.

“Well,” Maureen gave it thought, “I’m pressing for Gale to take the post up here, if you’re gonna be close too, then it seals it. I could drive ya.”

Lu smirked at the sweet intention and tried, with as little care as she could muster in her voice, to inquire about Cleven’s intentions after his own discharge. “At the Navy base?”

“Yes.” Maureen kept it predictably upbeat and Lu was grateful for the lack of comment about her own curiosity, for the left hand turn that heeded her desire for some autonomous mobility, too. “They’ve got all the new stuff anyway, jets and all sorts of things to try out, you know? He’s excellent at teaching, great as a test pilot, he’d fit well, I think. Don’t you?”

“Sounds good.” she shrugged, trying not to feel personally responsible for him being squeezed out of his beloved air force. He’d insisted it wasn’t her big mouth that got him in trouble. And he would. Just as she was sure it hadn’t been Brady to do it, so that left her and her comments and that awful deposition that the big guns took and ran with, until everything got so bent out of shape she hardly recognized things for how they were herself. Being busy again would help with that, she was sure of it. “I still can’t believe it all fell out like that.” she muttered, thinking back to the school administrator and the students and all the faces that would be waiting inside the DMV, all just one little jolt away from recalling the whole wretched story, including the awful parts that weren’t even true but she almost felt close to forgetting their falsity herself. She had no reason to be ashamed of knowing or serving with Cleven and Egan. Didn’t make it easier when it felt like everyone was passing judgement anyway.

“You really not swinging by home before you start all this?” Maureen’s soft question interrupted her mental death spiral.

“Didn’t do you much good just now.” Lu rejoined, not meaning to cut so harshly, but it proved her point quite well and Maureen acquiesced to it with a begrudging tilt of her head.

“Maybe not, but I always-“ she bit her lip briefly, before casting her eyes down in sad annoyance, “-always enjoyed hearing the good stories, the ones you and Jack and Benny had. Maybe they were just the good ones, but I liked hearing them, stories about families like that. Sorta family you wanna get back for. It’s been four years, Lu, they must miss you terribly.”

There were letters for that. And there would be letters still. And it didn’t have anything to do with how good her Grandma and Grandpa were, she couldn’t go home with this hanging around her neck the way it was, drag it home with her, curse even that sunny place with its shadow, know for certain there wasn’t a place on earth free of it. This way, in her mind's eye, she could still go away to big skies and the beating metal wings of the old windmill, and endless straw grass and scrub brush, and the only version of her out there was the one she hadn’t been for some time now. “I’m not ready.” she stated simply.

And that’s how some things were after this war.

“Well, we’ll be close.” Maureen shuffled out the comfort awkwardly, like she’d caught a glimpse inside Lu’s inflamed cacophony of a mind. “And I’m sure Bucky will bother you, endlessly. College or not.”

They’d parked by now, in front of, Lu was pleased to see, the DMV. “Jersey drivers are terrible, yeah? I think I recall Major Kidd saying so.” she asked.

“Yeah, terrible.”

“Think I can pass here?”

“This why you asked me and not Bucky to take you here?”

“Duh.”

“He’ll be horribly upset if you don’t let him advise you on a car.” Maureen pointed out.

“And he can,” Lu remained magnanimous, she owed Bucky Egan her life, and just because they were stateside didn’t mean he could handle being set aside any better than he had in camp- she would know. Once her Major, always her Major, she wouldn’t dare buy a car without his advice. That wasn’t the issue. “He can, I just need to pass this thing without his commentary workin’ me all up.” Lu glanced back at the cinderblock municipality building furtively, like she was about to storm the place in a secret mission.

“Lu, you’ve gotta brake when you turn.” Maureen insisted soberly, “I don’t care if you’ve got it in the bag otherwise- you’ve still gotta brake, yeah? Just brake when you turn, they’ll pass you fine. You’re a good driver, a very good driver, you just don’t brake when you turn…besides… Jack and Benny are pussies. I’ve said what I’ve said.”

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Motaversary Week 6: Most heartbreaking scene

#my last two brain cells hanging on for dear life