Chapter Text
Soft music played in my headphones, a soundtrack that I had never seen the movie of. Shuffling the stack of cassette tapes into a more organized pile, then taking the top one and putting it into the digitizer. Old voices, old stories, old papers. Everything that I touched was carrying a story of some kind. Whether it was a test that captured a moment with a veteran that never made it into the final recording, or static following a particularly impactful tale. I liked working in records, the patterns soothed me, the scent of history almost flowing around the building. It was nice, I enjoyed it.
A small click sounded from the Digitizer, I pulled out the tape, moved it into a box on my left, and then grabbed the next. This pattern had started out interesting enough -well as interesting as moving audio from one form to the next can be. Now, the pattern was getting to me, my back was tired and the stack of tapes I still had to do didn’t seem to be getting any smaller. I looked up as the records door opened, a man walking in. He had an umbrella in one hand, sunglasses perched on his nose, wearing an officer’s cover, which was tucked under his arm, and a khaki uniform. His hair was gelled into a standing style, the ends blonder than the rest.
Oh good, there’s a storm, I thought glumly. My basil was on my porch and was most likely getting the shit kicked out of it. Thanks for that, God. The man left his umbrella by the door and headed towards my office. He knocked on the door frame, sliding the pair of sunglasses up his head, as I looked at him from over my computer. I had left it open for visitors since the woman who worked reception was sick.
“Hi, you work here?” he asked, smiling. I kept a straight face, and shrugged.
“I don’t know, they just put me here and gave me a degree.”
He gave a small laugh and walked in. I took out the current tape, looking for a longer one in case he needed some information fetched from deep in the archives.
“I need some papers on the Hellcat, the Grumman. Well, blueprints and some photos -colored photos.”
“Sure, we have those, any particular pictures? In flight, maintenance shots, promotional art?” I asked as I rose from my chair and headed towards the office’s door. Leading the way past reception into the archives, a room that was lined with shelves that were filled with cardboard boxes.
“Uh, yeah, any of those would work.”
I started walking down a few rows,checking my head up and down to track the box’s labels.
“How much you think you have? Seems like you’ve got a whole library stuffed in here,” he asked, running his hand along the shelf.
I looked over at him, his head tilted up, gazing at the tops of the shelves. He dragged his gaze from the ceiling to look at me, a crooked smile on his lips.
“Hmm, I don’t have an exact number. But, we have documents dating back to 1775, including copies of some of John Paul Jones’ letters, and books pertaining to his service and life. We also have a few recordings from veterans of past wars, written and audio. Though if you wish to hear any of them you’ll have to wait, I’m busy-Well, the archival department has restricted visitor access to them at the moment.” I had kept walking as I spoke, maybe if I had looked back I might have seen how interested he looked at what I had to say.
“Grumman F6F Hellcat -Blueprints, Casualties, Missions, Personnel, Pictures, Registrations…” My voice trailed off as I grabbed the first box, holding it out in one hand for the man to take. Then reaching down and collecting the ‘Pictures’ box, which was a fair deal larger.
“You’ll have to understand that only some of this material may be copied, burrowed, or removed from this building pending permissions. You can use this desk here,” I placed the large box on a desk near the door. “I’ll be in my office, let me know about any materials you would like to take or have copied, and tell me when you are done so I can be sure the material is returned,” I said, smiling politely.
“Yes Ma’am, thank you,” he said, opening the boxes and carefully setting documents on the desk, “I’m Tom, by the way, or Iceman. Maybe you’ve heard of me?” His head popping up from looking in the boxes, with an almost childish smile, his voice taking on a cocky tone. Ah, Pilot. I could see the anchor and wings on the left of his shirt, pinned above his pocket. It surprised me how long it took him to point it out, the previous pilots I had met seemed incapable of such a feat, stating their call-signs and regaling me with stories as soon as possible.
“No, I don’t think I have. Are you any good, or are you just here to pad out the class?” I joked, pretending to straighten out some boxes. Of course he was good, he was at Top Gun, but I felt like teasing him. He was the first person I had talked to today, and I didn’t like the thought of just returning to my work. Not when he actually asked nicely for what he needed, instead of just ordering me around.
“Am I any good?” he laughed as he spoke, looking down at the papers in his hand. “Well, you’ll be happy to know you are talking to the top of his class, next in line for the Top Gun Trophy, overall fantastic pilot, Iceman. I-,” he stopped shuffling papers and turned slightly to face me, “am no filler.”
I couldn’t help the smile on my face as I hummed in response, turning towards the door.
“Well, Tom” he smiled again at that, he seemed to smile a lot, “I hope you find everything you need.”
“I will… Um?”
“Lawson”
Click, pull, drop, shove. Click, pull, drop, shove. The repeating pattern for the past hour, as I was slowly working my way through the tapes. Tom, Iceman as he asked me to call him, was still there as well. He had called me over to put away the boxes, then asked for some new ones, then some more. By now I had fetched him four separate planes, and two tanks. Blueprints, articles, even a book about a young tank commander in WWII. Each time we would walk quietly, collect the boxes, then return to his table. Then he would stand there and dig through the boxes. Occasionally he would call out interesting facts or questions to me, and I would respond with anything I knew about it. Sometimes I would just listen, a few times while waiting for tapes to finish I would just watch him, the tapes I should be organizing and the CDs that needed labeling sitting forgotten on my desk. He didn’t seem to mind though, smiling back when he caught me watching him.
I looked up at him calling my name. I leaned in my chair until I could see him through the door, he was holding onto the archive door frame by one arm, smiling, again.
“Yes, Iceman? Do you need something else, perhaps a submarine this time?” I asked, standing and leaving my office.
“Alright, alright, yeah I’m done. Just need to put these away.” He dropped his arm and stood to the side to let me pass. I carefully picked up the papers with him and returned them to their boxes. I glanced at the pile of Hellcat papers, scrunching my eyebrows in confusion, they were the only ones he kept out.
“Did you not find what you needed for the other planes? If you like, I could check our online catalog, I’d have to order copies from another archive.” I put down the papers in my hand and started towards the door.
“No, that’s fine. I, uh, didn’t need any of those,” he said, focusing on the papers in his hand and putting them in the right boxes. I looked at him for a while, his focus was solely on the papers in front of him. He kept his head bowed, his eyes flicking over at me once or twice. Why was he acting shy? The man caught me staring and acted like it was completely normal to watch a stranger as if they were a rare animal. I watched as he closed the last box, turning his head to look at me.
“Right,” I said, reaching past him and gathering a few boxes into my arms, “well, I hope the photos come in handy.”
“They will,” Tom grabbed the last few boxes and followed me along the shelves.
“Sorry if I kept you from your work. Seemed mighty important.”
“A bit,” I said, pushing a box onto the shelf, then stepping back to let Tom deposit his. He had to reach up to put his away, after storing the box he left one hand on the shelf, turning to face me. He kept staring, after a second he cocked his eyebrows up at me.
“Oh!” I suddenly realized he was expecting me to keep going. “Well, I was, uh, digitizing interviews with veterans -moving them off of cassettes to CDs. We’ll keep the originals, but the information needs to keep up with the times, if we wait too long it’ll just be harder to store it.”
He hummed in response and started up the aisle, walking backwards, waiting for me to catch up . He reached for the box in my arms, but I just pulled away, joking that I’d carried more of these boxes by myself than he’d believe. Being a bookworm did require upper arm strength, especially when tasked with boxes containing so much valuable information.
“How’d you get into this anyway? Family serve, just get used to hearing stories all day?”
“No, well, my grandfather did, everyone’s did,” I headed down F, walking about half way down before crouching and returning the last box in my arms. “I just liked learning, and doing this job is just learning. I probably know more than some historians!” I joked looking up at him, his arms were crossed, his body leaning against the shelves. He was smiling down at me, then he seemed to catch himself and looked around at the shelves extending all around us.
“If I worked here I’d probably spend all day reading this stuff. I like learning too, always have. I joined ROTC, wanted to learn everything I could. I liked it, college and Officer training kept me busy. Went out of state too, East Coast. I wouldn’t recommend it though, too cold.” I stood, walking with him back to the door.
“Too cold for The Iceman?” A hint of playful astonishment in my voice.
“I’m cool, not cold blooded.” To say anything other than he responded cool-y would be inaccurate, but the ‘on brand-ednis’ was almost annoying. He had this air around him, it was teetering between confident and cocky, but it somehow seemed removed, or refined, from himself. Not an act, maybe just played up. The career he had chosen was notorious for rearing overconfident blow-hard's with a penchant for danger. Though, I suppose you’d have to be to survive training and combat.
“Why’d you want to be an Officer? Just wanted to fly or did you like the Navy more than the Air Force?” We’ve made it into the lobby, his umbrella still propped up by the door. He rocked his head back and forth before responding.
“I like flying, but the Navy, I don’t know, just something about her. Spoke to me, ya’ know?” he was smiling again, reaching for his umbrella. “Old girl has something special.”
“Guess that’s the same with me and history,” I inwardly cringed at that. Oh yeah, fighter pilot, history major, same ‘diff. Mercifully he seemed to have missed that comment, or at least registered how stupid it was and was affording me a lack of acknowledgement.
He absentmindedly nodded, pushing his back against the door, chewing on his lip.
“You doing anything this week? Later, like Saturday?” He asked, tapping his umbrella lightly against the door.
“Probably, they don’t keep me in here all week. Sometimes I even get Holidays.”
“You like barbeque? You don’t have to, just you know, the place I have in mind has some pretty good barbeque.”
I scrunch my face in amusement, before asking, “Like a ‘date barbeque’? Or a ‘come check this place out, and meet my girlfriend’ barbeque?”
“Like a ‘I’d like to see you again, not at work’ barbeque.”
“Yeah,” I nodded my head, smiling, “I like barbeque.” His face lit up in a smile that made my face feel a little warm, kind of like having the sun hit you in the summer. Don’t start sweating, that’d be weird.
“Good, Kansas City Barbeque. Not far off base, you’ll like it,” he said, pushing against the door, opening it. I watched as he slipped out the door and started down the hall.
Click.
Next tape.