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Down in the massive ballroom, lit in sparkling light by the chandeliers high overhead, the crowd of gowns and uniforms mingles and murmurs, waiters pick their way through wth platters held high over their heads, and over it all the string quartet saws away.
Perched on a mezzanine balcony mercifully empty of people, and unseen by almost anyone save for occasional waiters and whoever’s used the bathroom up here in the last hour or so, one Lt. Pete Mitchell savours a flute of warming champagne and air rank with stale old lady perfume and sweat.
On one hand, he’s feeling pretty smug about being here. He’d worked his way through that crowd like a pro, knows how this game gets played, and why not? He’s earned his damn spot here, fought tooth and nail for his uniform and his wings as much as any of the legacy pledge Annapolis brats. He’s earned it. Maybe even more so than aforementioned brats.
And yet if this is what he has to look forward to ‘earning’ with each new piece of brass on his uniform…going the way of the Kamikaze pilots of the Forties is starting to seem like a more appealing option.
Pete swirls the dregs of his drink and thinks about all the places he’d rather be instead. In the cockpit of his jet, chasing bandits with Goose laughing and screaming behind him. Five beers deep and bogarting the karaoke stage of any number of bars on the coast. Trapped in Stinger’s office with the fan that never worked being lectured for any number of close cuts he took on a hop. Lashed naked to the prow of the Enterprise during a winter storm in the North Pacific.
Spending time with Penny Benjamin.
Penny - she was the reason he’d agreed to attend this goddamn production. He’d have to be insane to refuse such a chance to spend time with her, at something outside but still within reasonable safe distance of the fleet. The invite to Rear Admiral Morland’s 65th birthday seemed as good an opportunity as any for that.
That and he didn’t want to piss off seemingly the only admiral in the entire United States Navy who didn’t treat him like he was radioactive waste. Mostly though, it had been for Penny. Penny, who he hadn’t seen in over a year and who had rendered him speechless with a look the moment he’d sat down in the car - not just a car, a fucking *Bentley* - that had picked him up from his and Goose’s modest housing.
He wasn’t normally so shy, but it was pretty hard to loosen up and be chatty with a girl when Madame Benjamin was staring poisoned daggers at you in the rearview mirror. Still, he’d figured they’d have plenty of time to catch up after the initial introductions made at the party, and the obligatory congratulations made to the old duffer whose special night this was.
That had proven to be a poorly calculated risk on his part. Before he could so much as ask if she’d like to accompany him to the dance floor, Penny had been dragged away by her mother into what looked like a hurricane made of crinolines, sprayed hair and enough makeup to paint a three-ring circus’s worth of clowns. As for himself, he’d been force-marched by the Admiral Benjamin through an armada of brass who shook his hand with all the enthusiasm as if he’d just shoved it in horseshit and wiped it across John Paul Jones’ tomb, and stood there as they talked among each other for what felt like hours, nodding politely, accepting offered drinks, and offering in his turn an occasional Yes Sir, No Sir, and occasionally a Just Doing My Best Sir whenever the old boys graciously remembered that he was still there and asked him a question.
Eventually, the admiral had finally, mercifully set him free with a slap on the back with his hat and a “Now you go enjoy yourself, son - that’s an order!”
In what was becoming a disturbingly frequent habit, he’d disregarded an admiral’s direct command and instead launched a desperate one man search-and-rescue op for Penny. Despite several circuits of the ballroom and surrounding salons and even a few surreptitious forays into the ladies’ room, he came up frustratingly empty handed.
Empty handed, and more than a bit drunk.
With nothing but a few seafood hors d'oeuvres to soften the blow of five too many flutes of Bollinger on an empty stomach, plus whatever that distilled piss the old boys club had plied him with was, it wasn’t long before the previously stable marble floor started pitching like the flight deck in a hurricane and he’d had to find somewhere to sober up, and fast. He wasn’t about to add “the guy who puked lobster puff chunks on the COMATLFLT’s wife” to his already infamous surname.
So here he was, outside looking in like the partnerless girls at the school dances with nothing to do but look hopefully across the gym and lurk around the punch bowl.
Speaking of.
He knocks back the last of his drink, counterproductive though that might be to his self-directed mission objective to sober up. He’s not wasting free booze. Swapping his empty flute for a fresh glass off a passing waiter’s tray - it’s only polite, the guy was looking real weighed down - he leans a bit heavily on the balcony overlooking the main ballroom space.
Skirts outnumber trousers and uniforms by at least three to one. He gives a rueful smile to nobody in particular and knocks back half of the flute in one go. If this were any other joint he’d be in his element, spoiled for choice, target rich environment, fish in a barrel, all that. The opposite would be just as true, but there’s certain lines even he won’t cross when the Navy’s prying eyes are all around him.
Currently nobody’s prying eyes are up here, however. He could strip naked and dance a waltz with an imaginary, equally naked Penny and nobody would be the wiser.
“Hey Pete,” Penny’s voice followed shortly by the real Penny seemingly materialize out of nowhere to his right and he nearly drops the glass over the balcony, a sizeable portion of the champagne sloshing over the edge as he jerks back.
“Shit fuckin’ goddamn it - ” he hisses and then freezes in a a moment of tipsy panic just as he turns around. Madame Benjamin had blanched at his exclamation of “shoot” when he’d nearly forgotten his hat in the car on their arrival - before he realizes that the object of his search is in fact alone.
“Penny! Oh, I mean. Where’s your parents?” He gasps, trying to catch his breath.
“And here I thought you’d be happy that I’d slipped the chaperones,” she smiles and its more radiant than the crystals making up the car-sized chandelier hanging by their heads.
“Anyways, mom’s off trying to corral dad away from the buffet table and back to listening to his doctor about sugar,” she continues, “God, you should’ve seen the fuss he puts up, a grown man - ! ”
She’s still talking and Pete nods along, but he’s not really listening. He’s staring, totally unsubtle. He doesn’t really care that he’s staring either, because god damn is Penny stunning. She’s wearing white, but the dress isn’t the stark white of his uniform. Its a warmer shade that reminds him of sandy beaches, little puffed sleeves looking like the sea foam. Her hair hangs loose, darker than the last time he saw her, the front just held back off her face with a few crystalline clips, the same shape as the drops hanging from her ears.
She looks like something that should be protected by glass, like a ballerina in a music box. Impossibly perfect, untouchable.
Pete feels a big stupid smile spread across his face, and his ears and cheeks feel like they’re burning and are definitely totally red from the heat that’s risen up here and all the booze. He realizes maybe a bit too sluggishly that Penny’s stopped talking and is just looking right at him. Not in the good admiring the figure he cuts in his whites way, more like she’s wondering if he’s ill or gone slightly crazy. Shit.
“Pete, are you okay? You’re very…well you’re looking kinda unsteady, are you alright?”
“Hm? Oh yeah it’s just, really hot in here. Whew,” he huffs and tugs at his collar a bit for theatre’s sake.
“I think they cranked it up for the benefit of all the bare arms on the ladies without thinking about us poor fellas in full uniform. Pretty unfair, don’t you think?”
“It really is. It’s no way to treat our brave navy men.” she muses, a knowing look on her face. She nods towards the hand of his still holding the crystal flute.
“Especially ones who’ve drunk half the nation’s stock of champagne.”
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” he groans, trying to find somewhere to set the glass down, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find you and the admirals and captains all kept offering me drinks and I didn’t think I could say no, and it was all really expensive stuff. I hated it, I don’t even *like* brandy - ”
Penny waves him quiet, and then jerks her thumb in the direction of a huge door off to one side of the ballroom.
“I know usually it’s the guy who calls the shots at a thing like this, but I think you’re a bit over your limit to drive. Wanna take a walk? Pretty sure the garden out back is open. Bit of fresh air might do you some good,” she smiles, and Pete’s heart does an inversion maneuver of its own accord. He leaves his half-full glass on the balustrade and takes her arm instead.
Somehow they make it down the stairs, and he only gets a few sidelong looks - and a giggle from Penny - when he tries to pull the door open when the elegant bronze handle is clearly engraved with the word PUSH.
“Steady now, sailor,” she murmurs when he leans a little harder against her as she opens the door for them. He doesn’t even have it in him to say for the millionth time that he’s not a sailor, she should know this by now before they're out into the summer night.
When Penny had said “garden”, he had imagined something like a path between a few rosebushes and maybe a couple of those weird stunted trees he’d seen fleetingly on shore in Japan, not the fucking man-made jungle of plants that look like they should have dinosaurs browsing on them. He looks up, half expecting a long necked monstrosity to poke its head through the greenery, but sees only occasional lamp posts that bathe the gravel path in dim gold light.
Pete lets Penny lead him on, along the trail that twists and turns like a damn aerobatics course. He’s having a hard time understanding how this zig-zagging is going to help him sober up, until they reach a hairpin turn in the path with a small stone bench set in a tangle of bushes, covered all over with huge white flowers and spiky looking leaves.
“Here we go. C’mon, take a seat, relax a bit,” Penny says, and sits down gracefully on the bench, patting the space next to her. Pete follows a moment later, not nearly as gracefully as he lands with an audible thump. He’s definitely gonna have some interesting bruises tomorrow but is really just grateful that he’s finally got his ass parked on a stable surface.
“Gosh, thanks,” he pants, not even caring how cornball he sounds.
The stone bench is still a little warm underneath them from a scorching Californian day, hours after the sun’s set. There’s a gentle salt breeze wafting through the branches and bushes, and he breathes it in deep, feeling like he’s coming out of hypoxia, the sickening dizzy high fading with each slow inhale-exhale.
Pete takes his hat off - at some point he’d put it back on, though he can’t remember when, and wafts himself like a nervous debutante with a fan. He scrubs a hand through hair that’s sticking to his forehead in clumps, now unforgivably sweaty and messy by naval standards and quite frankly by polite company standards too.
“Interesting,” Penny murmurs.
“Hm?”
“Oh, it’s just the flowers. These are Devil’s trumpets,” she continues, her fingers idly brushing one of the blooms. They look almost as white as the petals in the low light.
“They say every single piece of this plant makes you trip to hell and back if you eat it, or it’ll kill you. Surprised it’s even legal to grow them here, I know it’s illegal to even have the seeds in some states.”
“Well I won’t pick you one, just in case we both get in trouble for it,” he responds.
“We’re not in trouble, Pete.” She smiles, and god damn it he can’t help but smile back.
Yeah, he thinks, nothing to see here. Just the black sheep of United States Naval aviation with some top brass’s precious daughter in a secluded, quiet place far away from prying eyes and keen ears - shit. Pete’s insides do a sudden zero-g nosedive, that has nothing to do with the amount of booze he’s knocked back all night.
“Are you sure your parents don’t mind that you’ve gone off, right? I mean, do they know we might be out here and not back there?” He asks, jerking his head in the direction he’s pretty sure they came from.
“Just between you and me, Pete? I really don’t care what they think right now,” Penny sighs.
“Easy for you to say,” he mutters, and regrets it immediately because he sounds like a sulky teenage boy. Penny gives him a sidelong look of surprising sympathy.
“Sorry. I forget sometimes that he’s one of your superiors, not just my dad. I know he likes you and you don’t wanna screw it up. But trust me,” she pats his arm, “he’ll ‘understand’ pretty much anything once I talk to him. One of the few perks of being daddy’s favourite little girl, I guess,” she heaves a sigh, suddenly looking absolutely beat. Pete frowns.
“Is there a downside to that..?” He asks. Pete’s never really been anyone’s favourite…well, favourite anything since Duke Mitchell was declared MIA somewhere on the Viet-Cambodian border and his mother was declared unfit to look after a five-year-old boy in view of her “declining mental state”. At least, until he met Goose. Penny rolls her eyes.
“Well, it’s just…you know sometimes I feel like he thinks I’m still twelve, not twenty-two? I mean you probably both know guys my age who work on million dollar planes on billion dollar boats, and you don’t call them ‘kid’ or ‘sweetie’ and talk to them like their degree is this really neat project they’re working on for the school science fair,” she scuffs one of her satiny white shoes against the gravel path.
“But I guess since he missed so much time on sea tours he never really got to see me grow up…I’m gonna be his ‘my little girl’ until I’m a grandma.”
“S’quite the image, Penn,” he chuckles, “well, what’s your mom think?”
Penny lets out a snort.
“Mom? I don’t think she’s seen me as a kid from the day I could walk. Just some kind of mini-adult who’s gotta know just the right social graces and manners and to just be the perfect little prize for some nicely decorated officer - no offense, Lieutenant,” she apologizes.
“None taken,” he smirks.
“Thanks. Anyways I fought tooth and nail to dress myself up like this and not let her…well, make me look like all the other navy debs in there. It was such a production in the dress shop AND at the hair salon, you’d think I’d started a world war. They should give me one of your ribbons for my victory on that front,” she rests her palm on his chest, over the colourful strips of decorations. He kind of doesn’t want her to move it. Ever.
“I mean, I know she just wants me to fit in with the others so I won’t be lonely. But I just don’t want to, I just…don’t. And I just can’t stand it sometimes - gosh, sorry I’m yammering, you’re not here to listen to me complain about mom and dad when you haven’t even seen me in forever. I must sound like a total ungrateful brat. Hope you don’t mind that,” she looks up at him, a little sheepish. It’s the cutest she’s ever looked in his eyes, and that’s saying something.
“No, I don’t mind that at all.”
Suddenly Penny yanks her hand out of his and fixes him with a look that might make even Stinger shit himself if it was locked on his ass.
“So! You think I’m an ungrateful brat?”
Oh fuck. Execute evasive maneuvers, now.
“What? I didn’t say that - oh god no Penny, I’m sorry,” Pete makes to stand up, still a bit unsteady as he stammers.
“Just…okay I’m fine now, look let me walk you back to your parents and I won’t - “
He rises only halfway off the bench before Penny grabs his arm and pulls him back down with a thump. She throws her head back with a laugh, a real fullbody one and god, it sounds wonderful, as good as the scream of an F-14’s engine but also not because its soft and musical and not likely to destroy his hearing if he listens to it forever, which he’d love to at this moment. Just as soon as his heart stops racing.
“Oh come on, I’m just teasing you! God you are wound so tight tonight Pete Mitchell, they ought to stretch you across the deck and use *you* to catch the jets.”
“God fuckin’ damn it,” Pete sighs, shaking his head and letting the last of his self-censorship slide, “you’re a menace, Penny.”
Idly, Pete checks his watch. They’ve been out in the gardens for nearly twenty minutes, enough time for worrywart parents of a stellar young lady to start a search party. Much as he dreads plunging back into the mess, now that he actually has Penny at his side the prospect seems a little less daunting.
“Think we should head back inside, rejoin the party? We’re probably missed,” he pauses a moment, “at least, I’m pretty sure you’re missed.”
“Now that you mention it, mom and dad probably are starting to wonder where I’ve gone off to,” Penny sighs, “well, once more into the breach.”
Pete stands up, stretching out the kink he hadn’t realized he’d developed in his back and hips, a little less than elegantly. He offers a hand, and Penny takes it, rising ever so gracefully compared to him. Except when he moves to walk away, he feels a tug in his hand as she stays rooted to the spot. He turns around, giving her a questioning look.
“Uh, Penny…?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Pete?” she asks, stepping closer. She laces the fingers of the hand he took around his own, and he feels her trail the other hand up his back, feeling a lick of heat up his spine in its wake even through the layers of his uniform. Oh. Alright, he might be more sober than he was ten minutes ago, but he’s not quite sober enough to rein in this particular side of himself. He can play this game too.
“I can’t even begin to imagine what it could be,” he answers, giving his best look of Thinking Very Hard about it. Without warning he slips his free arm around her back, yanking her forward so suddenly there’s not an inch of air between them.
“Maybe give me a hint?” He lets his voice drop low as he leans down, bending her backwards just a little. Penny’s eyes widen, but the smirk remains, unmoving even as he hears the sharp little intake of breath through barely-parted lips. Up this close he can count the freckles on her rouged cheeks, see the flecks of colour in her eyes that somehow coalesce to make green from a distance.
Good God damn. The SECNAV could come barrelling around the corner with a warrant signed by the president for his arrest and imprisonment and he’d tell the old bastard to fuck off and die without a beat.
“I think you can figure it out, Pete.” It’s barely a whisper. He leans down just a fraction further, almost close enough that they’re sharing breath.
Suddenly, there’s a slap of heavy fabric on his head, and a sweaty brim yanked down over his eyes. He startles back, blinded.
“The fuck? Penny, what the hell-!”
“You were about to leave without your hat, Lieutenant!” Penny giggles. Before he can do a damn thing about the fact that he can’t fucking *see* she grabs his face, and closes the distance between their lips.
It’s quick, but forceful enough that it forces his mouth open on a gasp of surprise. He tastes sugary gloss and more than a hint of that god awful brandy, and it’s actually pretty damn great. Then with a surprising sharp nip to his jaw, it’s over. Pete yanks the cap off his eyes, and sees Penny, hands behind her back and looking far too innocent for a woman who’d just gotten the jump on an officer.
“Y’know, a simple, ‘oh hey you forgot this’ next time will do fine,” he sighs, settling it back on the way it’s supposed to go.
“Well then don’t leave your hat in banquet hall gardens, then,” she laughs, and offers her arm to him.
“Now are we ready to rejoin civilization, Lieutenant Mitchell?”
Pete hesitates, can’t quite make the necessary move to just link their arms. Now it’s her turn to fix him with a puzzled look. Something in the air between them has changed, and he can’t quite get a lock on what it is. It feels like the last second just before a launch off of the carrier, the last moment of stillness before the frenzy. He takes a deep breath, as if he could somehow call it by the taste.
“Penny,” he starts, reaches out to take her hand in his, gently, “do you actually wanna go back there, right now?”
“No, not really,” she murmurs, leaning her head against his shoulder.
“What do you actually wanna do?”
Penny straightens up and bites at her lower lip, glancing down as if she’s searching for the right words in the gravel under their feet. When she looks up at him again, there’s nothing but purpose in her eyes.
“Do you want me to tell you, or are you gonna guess again?”
“I think I’ve figured it out,” he murmurs, “but just I wanna be sure.”
This time, there’s no teasing about it. Their lips meet, and Penny lets out the smallest sigh against his mouth and her arms wind around his neck, pressing her close. Pete answers in kind, lets his hands drop to her hips and he pulls her against him as tightly as he dares, He wonders briefly if she can feel his heart absolutely thunder behind his ribcage.
Either way Penny must like it, because her lips part on a moan, and now Pete tastes sugar and brandy and its like he’s drunk all over again, and this time he never wants to sober up, just wants to drink down more and more of whatever this intoxicating thing called Penny is until he can’t take anymore, and keep going after that.
Still, he has to breathe at some point, and so does Penny. They part with a gasp, panting in each other’s spent breath. Pete can’t stop the smile breaking across his face.
“Well,” he pants, “I’m pretty sure I wanna stay out here, but I can’t help but feel a bit of hesitation on your end - ”
“Oh, don’t start this, Pete,” Penny rolls her eyes, and drags him back down for another kiss, knocking his hat off again.