Author's Note: Prompt suggested by Gunmetal and Songbird.
Q is for Quiet
It was mid-October, and all was quiet on base. Nothing was stirring, not even a breeze gently ruffling the trees. According to the doctors, this was the environment that planes were supposed to sleep in, but for Cabbie at the beginning of the winter of the season he found the utter stillness made it impossible to sleep.
He knew why. During the fire season Cabbie was always the one who stayed up to make sure that the smokejumpers made it home safe or stayed up on the radio to help keep them safe if they battled a fire through the night. It was a position that made a whole lot of sense for the bird because unlike the air tankers, he usually had a chance to catch a couple of uninterrupted naps the following day when he passed the smokejumper babysitting duty to Patch…but everyone knew that wasn't the only reason he volunteered for night dispatch. He also did it because he worried over his smokejumpers just as intensely as any parent would worry about their fledgling chicks.
Over the years, Cabbie had trained himself to stay awake until he heard the soothing sounds of his jumpers safely tucked in their hangar, but that meant that his body cried out to hear the sounds of their snores before bed even after the smokejumper season had ended and their hangar was quiet for the winter. But Cabbie knew that he needed to get back into the habit of sleeping on a silent base so that would get enough rest for him to perform his avalanche abatement duties. And this is why he sat in his dark hangar trying to will his eyes to stay closed.
The hours ticked by, and Cabbie gave up. He finally pulled out a Walkman kept exclusively for this purpose. Slipping on the headphones he settled on to his sleeping mat, and even though he knew that he needed to learn how to sleep in the quiet again, he pressed play. What greeted his ears was 90 minutes of smokejumper snoring that Dynamite had recorded for him once Maru had made it slip that the old plane suffered from extreme insomnia every time the smokejumper's left for the season.
Instantly the rumble and rhythm of breath and snores meet Cabbie's ears. It wasn't the same, but it was enough, and finally Cabbie McHale slept.
End Note: Hope you enjoyed this little moment of fluff...but it is time for us to look towards the next letter. What are your prompt suggestions for the R?
