Title: Early Formation
Author: Abbey
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Archive: Yes
Rating: R
Pairing: Janet/f
Disclaimer: Don’t own ‘em.
Summary: Janet will never again be as reckless and scared as she is right now.
Maxwell AFB, Summer
1989
Janet uncurls from the ball she sleeps in when she’s stressed and looks for the offending alarm clock. It’s her roommate’s, she sees. And she’s completely oblivious to it, her dark hair covering her sleeping expression. It’s still dark outside, and Janet groans as she pulls on her PT Gear. She searches for her least dirty running bra, least dirty pair of socks. Damn, but she doesn’t want to run today.
When Janet turns the lights on, Ann just about falls out of bed, limbs going in every direction, her little fleece blanket falling to the floor. “Fuck, Fraiser. What time is it?”
Janet laughs. “Hey. Chill out. We’ve got twenty minutes until formation.” She goes to the sink they share and pulls up her hair. She really should get it cut; it’s much too unruly to keep within regs, and anyway, she really doesn’t have the time.
It’s hot. Even though a fan rattles away on the room’s open window, and it’s five in the morning, hot, humid air oppresses the room. Janet is sweaty and flushed, and thinks of the formation: minutes of pointless standing in rows, snapping to and from attention, all while the sun rises higher in the low, heavy southern sky.
Ann is behind Janet in the mirror, and she takes a small clip and pins it into Janet’s offending, stubborn, strands of hair, those that don’t take well to humidity. “Here.” Ann’s voice is thick with the morning, and Janet stills, and looks unsteadily at Ann’s reflection: her intent expression, the sharp lines of her chin, how Ann’s unruffled posture contrasts with her own exhaustion and confusion.
“Thanks.”
*
Janet isn’t supposed to have a roommate for Commissioned Officer Training. She’s supposed to have a room of her own and reasonable privacy. She’s joining the Air Force as a doctor, and there are certain perks that go with that. Though, she thinks, as long as she’s doing this crazy thing, if she’d been smart she would have joined earlier and made them pay for her med school. She wasn’t supposed to have a roommate, but a pipe broke somewhere in the barracks, and someone needed a place to sleep. Janet is nothing if not flexible, and the people in charge of quarters knew that. And it’s good, rooming with someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.
The run over, Janet sits at her desk and flexes her ankle as the sweat drips from her shoulders to her belly, which twists and aches strangely. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ann rip off her shirt and untwist her hair, which falls well over her shoulders, nearly covering the bra which fails to hide the shape of her sweaty breasts.
Ann was prior service. She enlisted out of high school and worked a flight deck for several years before going to school and deciding to become a lawyer. She used the Air Force to pay for school, but she could never get rid of it, even after she’d served her time. Ann considers every task they are given just part of a game she understands well. She knows what to say. She knows how to walk, and what tones of voice to address different people with. Janet learns her job, studies what will be expected of her, but she can’t keep up with Ann’s language of rapid fire acronyms, her long stride, the sharp dart of her eyes.
*
The first weekend, Janet was damned near catatonic. A week of being the slowest in her flight—at running, at picking up tactics—had shut her brain down. Ann dragged her to church, saying “From what I know of you, you’ll thank me later.” Janet silently mouthed words to hymns she half-remembered, and after the sermon she fell to her knees and prayed she wasn’t making a big mistake. That she would do better the next week, that she’d do her real job well after the three short weeks remaining in her training. Janet didn’t hear anything when she prayed, but she always had problems listening. By the time she was finished, the church was empty. She found Ann where they’d parted ways in the lobby, standing next to an ac unit rattling away in a window and staring impassively into the rows of pews.
*
This is the second weekend, and Ann has decided that a trip
to the commissary is in order. Janet tells herself that God doesn’t care that
she’s shopping on a Sunday, that he understands. There are rows of food from
foreign countries—little chocolate cookies from
“You go somewhere and you get attached to the food. So they
keep it, you know? It makes it feel more like home, even though, well…this is
supposed to be home, for the people who live here.” Ann grabs a stack of
noodles and a package of spiced sausage. “
*
Gradually, Janet adjusts to the schedule: morning PT at 0530, classes during the day, practical exercises after lunch, usually off before dinner. She scribbles pages of notes on types of aircraft and emergency procedures, the specific makeup of the hospital system, on the chain of command and proper etiquette, on history and budget allocations and force strength. She is released at 1700 and walks through the barracks with her head spinning. It’s been two weeks, two remain, and she’s still not sure what she’s getting herself into.
When she staggers into her room, Ann’s leaning over the sink in a pair of tight jeans, putting on sparkling eyeshadow.
“Get dressed, honey.”
“There’s nothing to do. The guys must be doing something, but I don’t know—“ The men in Janet’s flight live in the same hallway. They room together. They do everything together, in and out of the classroom. Janet envies that closeness furiously.
Ann turns from the mirror and laughs. “Look, their poker
games are their poker games. You won’t be invited. It’s better that way. You
can drive to
*
This is crazy, Janet thinks, as they speed down Route 10 in Ann’s jeep. They left from the middle of Alabama, and there’s no way they’re going the four-plus hours to New Orleans and back in time for Saturday training, even if they have no early morning PT. Janet doesn’t worry about the missed sleep inherent in this scenario, just the logistics. She’s running on nerves and the heavy music Ann blows through the little car. It’s a new feeling, this fear, this edge. She’s laughing so hard as Ann imitates their flight instructor that she’s aching hard—her stomach, sore from sit-ups protests and coughs as she attempts to slow her breathing.
They never make it to
“You’ve gotta get out more, Janet. It suits you.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Janet doesn’t know what it is. Maybe the frogs in the trees or the heat of the windows or Ann’s soft chuckle. But she takes Ann’s face in her hands and kisses her firmly, so there can be no mistake, no hedging. She can immediately lose the kernel of fear lodged in her throat, because Ann meets her hungrily, press for press, and soon they’re tripping out of the car in their sequined tops and stiletto heels, jeans rubbing together, bodies quaking as Janet opens the door to the back of the car and falls onto the seat.
Ann takes off the shirt Janet borrowed from her, as Janet works the catch of her bra, to no effect. “Hey. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” Ann laughs, twisting her knee on Janet’s crotch. Janet lies there quivering when they are naked and pushing against each other. It is the craziest, stupidest thing Janet has ever done. When she comes, with the night and jagged breaths in her ear, she looks sideways and just barely makes out the Department of Defense decals on the windshield of the car.
*
They develop a pattern. Never in the barracks, not even though they can lock the door and pull the shades. They leave the base in separate cars, at fifteen minute intervals.
“God, I worry that anyone could tell, looking at my face,” Janet says, as she pulls on her uniform trousers in the morning.
“That’s why it’s good that you’re a doctor, and I’m a lawyer, and we don’t spend our classes together.” Ann says, laughing and pinning her nametape to a fresh blouse.
Janet is not exactly sure why she is doing this. She doesn’t exactly love Ann, but she’s stuck to her fiercely, loves being able to give her fears to someone. It isn’t healthy, this sort of dependency. But then, she spent the past several years lecturing people on staying healthy while working herself sick, and doesn’t the military want her to love the person next to her, to protect her as her own? Isn’t the strength of the bond between “comrades-in-arms” extolled in countless slideshows, in the shining testimonials she is shown?
*
Janet’s flight of students is shown where she would treat patients in various aircraft, if she was tasked to become a doctor for the worst of situations. There’s a Master Sergeant at one of these sites, and he may salute Janet, but he wastes no time in politely tearing her to shreds over the state of her hair, which despite its many pins, has escaped from its neat bun in the heat of the day. She remains composed, nods in agreement, and finishes the afternoon in time to come back to her room and whimper pathetically from the stress and humiliation of it all.
“You’re cutting my hair,” she tells Ann when she returns with a stack of legal books several feet high.
“You should really read the UCMJ. Did you know that making derogatory statements about the Secretary of Transportation is grounds for Court Martial?”
“Huh?”
“The Uniform Code of Military Justice. You should read it someday. According to it, we should both deemed unfit for service and honorably discharged,” Ann drawls sarcastically. She stops short when she sees that Janet is nearly crying, her face contorted and eyes suspiciously red.
“It’s a stupid thing really, but please cut my hair. I don’t trust the barber.”
“And you trust me? I’m a lawyer.”
“It’s easier.”
“Actually, you’re in luck,” Ann says, rounding up her scissors and a razor and a glass of water. “I’ve done most things once, this being one of them.”
They stack their trunks and Janet sits on top of them and watches as Ann sets to work. She cuts slowly, and Janet shuts her eyes and meditates to Ann’s hands on her neck, the snip of the scissors, and the pressure of the trunk’s edge on her thighs.
“I trust you.” Janet says, laughing, before she opens her eyes in the mirror. It’s not so bad. The hair is cut to her chin, well above her collar in the back. She would like to think that this makes her harder, makes her stronger. But she just looks strange to herself, staring intently in the mirror.
“See, nothing changed.” Ann says, kissing Janet’s now bare neck.
“Maybe I wanted to change.”
“That comes later. On the inside. Don’t worry. Trust me, dammit.”
*
The weeks end. Most of all, Janet remembers the combat simulation. How her voice rose as she yelled commands, as she assessed “casualties” and decided on procedures. She is good at it, and it’s a rush, one she’d like to experience again. Free after the exercise, Janet and Ann drive south, staying at a Holiday Inn just off the highway. Janet’s shins are bruised and sore beneath the scratchy sheets, but her body sings in Ann’s hands. She sleeps like she hasn’t in years.
“You’re doing this because you want one last act of
rebellion before you sell them your soul for good,” Ann tells her. They are
making for
“Among other things,” Janet says, closing her hand on Ann’s thigh.
*
Through the years, Janet will look for Ann on promotion lists in the Air Force Times. She will be promoted, and those Civil Air Patrol cadets—high school kids— that nervously saluted her at Maxwell will become new lieutenants. She’ll tell those she meets at the hospital that it’s good to have something of your own. “You lose the way you talk, walk, even the language you think in. It’s good to have something, some secret that keeps you your own person.” She’ll tell it lightly, with a smile, friendly advice from someone who’s been there.
She will start letters to Ann she won’t finish, because she won’t know what to say. She can only take so many risks and remain sane, so those she takes will be reserved for the mission. Whatever they had, it’s something she has to give up.
She will be that tough, focused soldier she feared she’d never become, and she will be amazed at how reckless she was, how afraid.
*
The highway is empty and there are hours to talk through. Ann grips her shoulder, and Janet smiles into the dying sunlight. She is strong, and she will carry this woman with her past the limits of the base, past promotions and setbacks and wars waged and won, past wherever the Air Force tells her home is.
END
(Index)
