Chapter Text
The keys in his hands are warm, heated from the press of his thigh, even as the frigid morning air bites at exposed skin, making Pete curse.
The front of the shop isn't much better, even once he shuts the door on the cold and locks it behind him, stomping his feet against the front mats and rubbing at his fingertips as he walks deeper inside. The quiet drone of the refrigerated cases, their lights glowing softly in the dark of the morning, is a balm on his nerves, and as he sucks in a deep breath, it chases the last of the tension from his shoulders. He doesn't turn on any lights, letting his feet guide him throughout the familiar shadowy masses of chairs and the front counter, until he reaches the entrance to the kitchen.
There, at least, it's warm. Twin ovens taller than he is dump heat like furnaces, ticking steadily up to 500 degrees as he walks past, set on timers the night before. He doesn't pause, however, until he's in front of the tiny bay of lockers in the far back corner.
Pete has to knock a couple of empty produce boxes away with his foot to open his locker, but he makes quick work of throwing in his jacket and gloves; toeing off his boots and exchanging them for his kitchen shoes, nonslip and comfortable but not prepared to combat the late Chicago winter. It's a familiar process, steadying in its routine.
From there, it's pulling last night's shaped pastries out of the walk-in and setting them on speed racks to proof, placing rounded balls of sourdough loaves that have been divvied up and nestled in baskets out on the counter in preparation, and smacking the proofing oven a few times until the light on the front sputters to life and the quiet whir of the fan hits his ears.
He should maybe wait until closer to open to start the coffee, but he figures he's allowed at least this indulgence in the morning.
Alone, in the quiet of his best friend's bakery, with the soft gurgle of the percolator to keep him company, Pete waits.
“Are they up to temp yet?” Nick has to speak up to be heard over the din of the mixer, the motor letting out a steady drone that covers up any softer attempt at conversation. Even so, he still has to nod towards the ovens before Pete understands, and turns to look.
He has to search for a moment before he spots the display, and he furrows his brow as he reads it.
“470?”
“So, not yet.” Nick’s frown is small, but it tugs down the corners of his mustache, and makes Pete think of his very first commanding officer, whose own mustache always gave him the impression of a catfish.
Pete doesn’t know how to respond, so he looks forward into the bowl of the mixer, waist high and rattling slightly as the mechanical arm nearly as thick as his own spins through the glossy mass of dough.
It didn't matter how many jobs he'd had, first shifts were always a specific kind of uncomfortable.
“This’ll need a while to rest before we can divide it up. Go grab the bench flour off the racking near the walk in, could you?” Nick finally prompts, and Pete is relieved to have an excuse to retreat to the far end of the kitchen.
Instructions, if nothing else, are easy. It’s familiar to fall into the rhythm of being taught, and Nick is patient enough with him that Pete doesn’t feel like he’s completely screwing up the morning routine.
He'd gotten there early, shifting impatiently in the frigid air in front of the dark shop windows. California got cold, sometimes, but 3:45 in Chicago might as well have been another planet to him. Without a key, he'd been beholden to Nick, and he scanned the street in anticipation of the other man's arrival.
The door opening from the inside startled Pete, but he was quick enough to hide it. Nick was on the other side, in worn denim and a t-shirt with what looked like a jam stain on the front, and he ushered Pete in.
"You're early, Christ-" His voice was sleep rough, and he had sent an unreadable look his way. "Mike said you were military?"
"I was," Pete confirmed, and Nick had dropped it.
It had been nice. Nick didn't dawdle, gave instructions that were clear but quick, and he seemed to trust Pete would keep up. After an hour, he'd held up a single finger at Pete and stepped away into the front of the store.
He'd returned with two cups of coffee, in mismatched mugs. They were steaming, and Pete had sent a curious look to the front.
"It's from upstairs," Nick explained quickly as he blew across the surface of the coffee, sending a few dark drops spilling down the side and over his fingers. He let out a quiet curse and wiped them off on his jeans. "Carole— my wife— gets up around now. I get the coffee started for her."
Pete sent a glance at the clock above the door, and his eyebrows ticked up minutely. The silence wasn't awkward, but it was heavy, and he felt the need to speak. Recently, he hasn't felt the need to fill the quiet. He swallows against the unfamiliar instinct, and meets Nick's eyes again.
"And you've got a son, yeah?" He hadn't taken a sip of his coffee yet, but he did then, aiming for casual.
"Yeah. Bradley." Nick's voice was undeniably fond.
"And he's-?" Pete angled his head down in a slight tilt towards his leg.
Nick nodded. "Yeah."
The first morning he was there alone, he'd come very close to panic.
The checklists helped.
Ovens on, bagel dough out, lye water simmering— check, check, check.
It wasn't compulsive. He never wrote them down.
But making a process was something he was familiar with.
Five years ago, lying in a hospital bed and staring down at the dip in the covers where his right foot should have been, his thoughts hadn't been on a prosthetic, or on what his life would look like.
It had been on his Tomcat.
The quiet drone of the doctor, soft voiced and reassuring as he clasped Pete's shoulder, the slightly pitying expression on the nurse who took his blood pressure, none of it registered.
Neither had that first week in a wheelchair, transferred to the VA for monitoring and a follow up revision surgery.
But the routines had stuck.
Morning wake ups, blood draws, first dose of meds, check ins, bright lights that always stung, no matter how apologetic the nurses sounded as they turned them on.
California was the last place he wanted to be, and the routines became a little different.
Deal with insurance, ignore the calls from the police impound lot, pack his apartment, think about booking the plane ticket, go to physical therapy, go to occupational therapy, think about booking the plane ticket, meet with the prosthetist, think about the plane ticket, think about the plane ticket, think about—
The first thing he did when he got in the cockpit was run through his preflight checklist.
The bakery didn't prove to be that different.
"So, Pete. Why Chicago?" Mike's voice is curious, but not demanding.
Pete hasn't been to many of these meetings. He'd only managed half a dozen in California, but he thought they weren't supposed to pry. Let you volunteer what was comfortable. He could bristle. Instead, he shrugs.
"I just love the Bulls."
There's a few chuckles in the group around him, and Mike sends him an inscrutable look, but shifts his gaze to the lady next to him. Susan, Pete's mind fills in a few second later. The hollow of her shirt sleeve, empty from just below her shoulder is on Pete's other side, but his eyes had slid over it when he walked in with deliberate inattention.
It happens the next time, too.
"Pete. Been to a game recently?" Mike's expression is bland, but there's the ghost of a challenge in it.
Pete thinks about leaving early. About letting one week bleed into the next and not showing up here, the bland meeting room on the ground floor of Saint Mary's, indistinguishable from every other catholic church he'd been dragged to as a kid. Instead, he meets Mike's gaze, and shakes his head.
"No. Not yet." He raises his chin, not quite defiant, but certainly not passive. "Need a job, first."
Mike's eyes had sparked for a moment, but it wasn't until the following week that he passes Pete a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it in the characteristic scribble of doctors, just barely legible.
Nick - 618-486-5327
The green line to Hyde Park was usually deserted when Pete got on the first train of the morning.
There was Glinda, who occasionally sat next to him and talked about her grandkids, even as she clutched the overstuffed bags in her lap and sent sidelong looks at the doors of each stop. She always wore the same clothes, only taking off the crocheted hat in the summer when the morning wasn't quite cold enough to justify it. Pete had once offered her some of the rugelachs he'd been experimenting with, clutched in a slightly crumpled paper bag, and she'd given him the rough side of her tongue then hadn't spoke to him for a month.
She softened again, eventually. But Pete never offered her anything else. He understood something about pride.
The route takes them through downtown, and there are always a few people who board at the transfers, but never often enough to stand out in Pete's memory.
He was used to early rising, roused by the roar of engines spooling up above him on the deck of the aircraft carrier that did as much to wake him as any alarm, and the transition to civilian life had never quite broken the habit. Still, he wasn't usually too alert that early in the morning, rocking gently on the uneven rattle of the tracks of the L.
It takes three times for him to remember the blonde.
He's already on the train when Pete gets on at the California stop, a fact that never fails to make him snort. Pete doesn't pay him too much attention.
It was a rule, one he stuck to faithfully, to see things but never notice them. His apartment, a second floor unit in a converted brick rowhouse was nice enough, but the neighborhood wasn't always the same. He took in enough to keep out of trouble, but never enough for trouble to notice him.
He wasn't the same kid he'd been when he enlisted.
So Pete takes in the hunched posture, half shut eyes, and disheveled hair our of the corner of his eyes, and settles in his normal seat, a few rows back from the door and on the far end of the car from the other man.
He rides the train as long as Pete does, which is an oddity in and of itself. Pete doesn't let himself linger at the last stop, too set in his habits, and is off the train as quickly as his legs can carry him as he trots down the station stairs at 63rd and turns up Cottage Grove towards the bakery.
Once he's through the doors, enveloped by the ever-present smell of warm bread and even warmer ovens, any thought of the new figure on the train escapes him, and he starts his day in earnest.
Check.
"You charge too much for this, baby." Heidi's voice is smoke-rough, and she frowns down at the parchment wrapped bundle on top of the case, selected by her a few minutes ago with a point from her bony finger.
Pete tsks softly, and grabs a pair of tongs, reaching into the case to snag one of the vatrushka. They're still warm, the glossy shine of the pastry highlighted by the soft lighting of the case, and he has to jostle it a little to get it to shake free from the one behind it.
His morning isn't complete without Heidi and her complaints about the price.
"Do you see the price on the case?" He asks, sliding the pastry into a small, wax-paper bag. When she sends him a hard, sidelong look, he continues. "And are you gonna pay that much?"
She scoffs, head jerking as she sends dark eyes, hard as flint, over her shoulder towards the door behind her.
"I send enough people through those doors, I should be getting these for free. You should be paying me." She turns back, and when Pete sets the pastry next to the loaf of black bread, she frowns. "What is that?"
"Call it a danish." The actual name is on a tiny card, taped in the front of the case, but he knows she won't look.
"I'm not paying for it."
Pete nods. "I wasn't gonna charge you anyways. It fell on the floor in the kitchen."
Her gaze is hard, but eventually she snorts, and sends a wry look his way as she scoops the two items off the top of the case, hands steady despite her age. "You're trouble, Petey."
"Only for you." He takes the cash she hands her, change already pulled out in anticipation, and drops it in her hand at the same time. "Come in later and you can tell Nick he's an idiot for his prices to his face."
She doesn't justify it with a reply, and he watches her retreating back as she walks out the door, until she disappears around the corner, head high and headwrap fluttering in the slight breeze.
The chime of the timer in the back is enough to break his absentminded stare, and he spins on his heel before it can chirp at him a second time.
When he rides the train back to his apartment, just after the lunchtime rush, he's usually tired enough that he doesn't notice anyone else, one way or the other. It's nearly an hour long ride, from the end of the line near the university, back to his apartment south of Humboldt Park.
He could probably afford something nicer, but when he'd shown up a few years ago, whittling through his savings and resolutely ignoring the paychecks he got from the Navy, disability pay that he'd 'earn' for life; it had been cheap, relatively clean, and the landlord hadn't blinked when he asked if he could move in the next day.
Still, as he settles in his seat (not his typical one, like the ride in. The afternoon train is always more crowded than the 4 AM line) he finds his gaze sweeping through the car for the same man as before.
He's not surprised that he's not there, but he is surprised at himself for looking.
When Pete gets inside his apartment, ears stinging from the cold wind and a little breathless after the walk up from the sidewalk, he knows he should eat something, now that he's home. He stole a particularly misshapen sausage roll, early, before he'd unlocked the bakery doors, and cut a chunk off a day-old loaf to make himself a sandwich with some of the cold cuts in the walk-in, but he knows he'll wake up halfway through the night, ravenous, if he doesn't make himself something more substantial.
When he starts, it's easy, a little thoughtless. Dicing vegetables, dumping them into a dutch oven to saute, cutting up the chicken thighs he'd found shoved in the back of his fridge after a careful sniff test. It's steady, and half an hour later, he's sitting at the tiny kitchenette next to the window, and staring down at the arrangement on his plate blindly. He stabs a chunk of chicken on his fork, gets a piece of onion, sweat through enough it's almost too slippery to impale, and lifts it to his lips.
His mouth feels ashen, and he sets the fork back down on his plate with a soft clink.
He scraps the plate clean into the trash, dumps the unwashed dish into the sink, and heads to shower off the day.
Once he makes a mark on Pete's awareness, the other man is always on the train when Pete gets on in the morning.
After the first week, he starts showing up with a travel mug clutched tight in his grip, his eyes squeezed shut as he waits out the long ride, gently rocking with the bumps of the track. He only opens his eyes when they're a stop or two away. He's not asleep, at least Pete doesn't think, but he never reacts to the train doors or the cold blast of wind when they open up at each stop.
Eventually, he seems a little more together, if no less exhausted. His hair gets brushed back, his clothes look a little less haggard, and a book bag stuffed nearly to bursting ends up sat on the seat next to him.
Pete isn't aware of any university classes that start at 4 AM, but it's been a long time since he attended school.
He becomes a steady presence on the train in the morning, and without thinking, Pete adds him to his expected routine.
Thursdays are the one day he has off.
He hadn't, initially. Quietly shrugged at the change to his routine, ignored the bone deep shiver of anxiety it inspired, and had adapted.
Pete was good at that.
He wasn't sure who had called who, even now. But a few months in, he'd been wrapping up his prep for the following morning, his already long shift bleeding into the mid afternoon when Nick had slid into the kitchen, drying his hand on a threadbare tea towel.
"Are the cinnamon rolls prepped?" His voice is light, and Pete hums his assent, his hands tied up in the steady routine of shaping tiny balls of pirozhki dough into taut rounds.
"And the sourdough?" It's an obvious question, with the mixer going behind them, the steady drone of the motor and occasional thump of the dough against the side of the huge bowl providing a soundtrack to his work.
"Finishing up. It needs to be divided, once it's out." He reaches the last of the dough, and drops the final tiny ball into the proofing tray, slightly spaced out from the herd of its brothers. "And the rye is measured out but hasn't been started yet. I thought I could wait until I get in tomorrow to start."
Nick shakes his head and slides the tray away from Pete, ignoring the sound of his quiet dismay. "Not tomorrow. I'm coming in to cover."
Pete snorts, and turns to rest his ass against the workbench. He's sure to end up with a line of flour across the seat of his pants, but he ignores it for now. "Any reason why?"
"You've got your meeting on Thursday mornings." Nick manages to deliver it neutrally, even as he leans back to look in the bowl of the mixer and reach up to flip off the industrial machine. It takes a moment to wind down, and Pete takes the chance to rearrange his expression into something slightly less fraught.
"I did." Pete isn't sure how to respond to this level of familiarity. He likes Nick, loves Carole, and he has to admit Bradley does something specific to his chest that he doesn't want to examine too closely. This was a level of meddling he didn't usually tolerate, and it takes effort to not bristle.
"You do." Nick sends him another look, and huffs out an indignant sigh at whatever expression he finds on Pete's face. "If you want to give someone a piece of your mind, give it to Mike. He asked about you. I didn't realize he hadn't seen you since Labor Day."
"Oh." Pete breathes out, a slight curl of guilt settling in his chest. "Yeah, he would—"
"And he did," Nick sends him a glance, and for once, Pete doesn't take it as an intrusion. "Go. Let him see you're not dead. Next time he'll call Carole, and she'll be less fun to talk to than I am."
Pete sends him a look, even as he straightens up from the bench. "I'll tell her you said that."
The pleased smirk of someone who's won an argument is the same, no matter where you went.
So he started going to the meetings again. They're north of downtown, a pain in the ass to get to, but after the first couple weeks, he reluctantly admits the weekly trip back to Saint Mary's was helpful.
Now, it's rote. The ride north takes a little longer than his morning commute, taking the green line into downtown and then transferring to the red line. It's busy when he goes, packed in with the other commuters, and he ignores the ache that radiates up his knee as he stands, hand wrapped tight around the pole to support him for the ride in.
It's a smaller group than usual this time, Mike as always, along with six or seven familiar faces. It's always easier, here. Still, he doesn't speak until Mike prompts him, and it's short, but not unfriendly. Talks about the newer recipes at the bakery, how the ice underneath his prosthetic makes his stump ache and thigh tense. He never had to deal with it when he had both feet, forever a California boy, so he really doesn't know if it's because of his missing limb, or just a side effect of the cold for everyone.
It's banal, dull, and a slow way to tick through an hour.
He leaves, feeling lighter than he has all week.
The next morning is a little harder, tripping back into the early morning routine with less aplomb than might be expected, given how long he's been doing this. So when he stumbles into the train car Friday morning, blinking sleep from his eyes and hoping his bed head wasn't too egregious after going to sleep with it wet, it takes him a moment to realize what's different.
The blonde man. He's still as weary looking as ever, scarf bundled high on his neck and book bag just as overstuffed. But now, when Pete tilts his head in a careful, sideways glance, he realizes the other man is watching Pete.
The feeling of being appraised, of being locked in someone's sights is no different on the ground than in the cockpit. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he realizes his ears are ringing. It sounds like a tone lock.
The man finally drops his gaze, eyes falling shut as he adjusts his grip on the travel mug in his hands. Pete doesn't exhale for a long while, and turns to stare out the window with an affected casualness. He doesn't think he blinks until they both pile off the train at the last stop.
Chicago always fools him with the beautiful tease of spring weather in January.
Three days of clear blue skies, temperatures creeping up to just brush 60, and Pete feels ten years younger.
It makes the inevitable snap back to winter that much harder.
The cold is expected, but the day after Pete had spent the afternoon sitting on the stoop and soaking in the sunlight in short sleeves (still shivering when the shade fell over him, but the principle of the thing mattered), he wakes to a glossy sheet of ice on his front steps and temperatures barely above freezing.
He slips twice on the walk to the train station, and the second time, he lands hard, directly on his bad leg. His knee aches, and the tight throb of his stump makes him certain he did some amount of damage.
By the time he gets off the train near the bakery, his whole leg is throbbing, a dull sensation that goes sharp when he puts weight on it. He can tug off a sock around his limb, hope the socket might squeeze a little less, but he still has to limp the few blocks to the bakery to do so.
He's cursing, a slow, steady stream when he unlocks the door, and only barely manages to keep from letting it slam shut behind him. There's no good chairs in the kitchen, but he's not doing this anywhere near the front windows, so he drags one of the chairs to the back with him, and slaps the lights on with a move borne out of years of familiarity.
The wood legs squeak against the polished concrete when he sits down, and he blinks as the buzz of the fluorescent lights sets his teeth on edge.
His pants have a rip near the top of the socket, almost at his knee. When he lifts the denim, he's relieved to see the fiberglass socket is intact, if a little scuffed. He hisses with relief as he tugs himself free, and as he pulls off the socks and liner, he lets himself breathe for the first time since he hit the ground near his apartment.
The end of his leg is a soft bundle, a tangle of red surgical scars that chase up towards his knee. If he tugged his pants up higher, they'd be matched by the long line down his thigh where they cut in to add enough metal and screws to piece his femur back together.
He's fine. His leg is sore, but as he flexes his knee and watches the movement, he knows he should get himself together again, don his leg, and start the prep. He'd be running late all day if he didn't, and soon.
Pete rubs a hand over the end of his leg, and doesn't stand up.
His knee is still bothering him when he gets up the next morning.
It might be the reason he's not paying attention when he's getting off at the end of the line, but he doubts it.
Regardless, the hard impact into the back of the man in front of him is enough to bring his attention back to the present, even as the man drops the bundle of papers in his grip with a curse. The wind catches them immediately, funneled through the covered station like a wind tunnel, and they scatter immediately.
"Shit—" The papers flutter and land in a haphazard pile, with some lifting and chasing away in the breeze. It makes the man swear again, and Pete finally processes who it is.
Blonde. Tired. The student. He's on his knees, back still half turned to Pete as he tries to stack the papers into a pile before they blow away.
"God damnit." His voice is quiet, emphatic and pissed, but when he turns to spot who's still standing there, he gets louder. "Are you gonna stand there, or actually do something, dipshit?"
"Sorry, I didn't see—" Pete starts, and the man cuts him off.
"Obviously." He sends another glare at Pete, and it leaves him off balance, gut churning and hot frustration boiling in his chest.
Pete glances at the ground, at the papers around him, and can't move. His knee feels locked out, and something hard and unnameable settles like lead in his gut at the thought of crouching down and not being able to get up again.
He looks down to one near his foot, and his breath catches. The tidy, thin lines of a maintenance diagram, a 9 cylinder radial engine, the prop flange removed to show the hollow end of the crankshaft—
—Breathe, sir, and stop trying to move. We're gonna get you free—
The paper gets yanked back as Pete watches, and the other man finally looks up at him again.
"Thanks," he spits out sarcastically as he gets to his feet, a thoughtless motion as he tries to organize his papers into something manageable in his arms. Pete can only stare.
The man doesn't look back as he leaves, and its only the twinge in Pete's knee from being locked straight that makes him move, and head to the bakery.
The clicking is low, hard to hear, and consistent.
Pete startles, like he does every time.
It's the wiring to the magnetos, misfiring across a fault, amplified by the radio—
No, it's not. He hasn't flown a reciprocating engine since he was learning to fly, but the clicking makes his chest tight and his blood run cold, and he can only grip the yoke between his legs—
He's never flown with a yoke, but the plane—
Gasping awake, Pete jerks upright and stares unseeingly at the wall across from his bed.