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It's been a few months, but the nightmares still come.
Drowning once would be enough for anyone, and yet the macabre corners of Collins' mind torture him with it again and again—real enough he can still feel the icy cold of the water, the throb of his knuckles pounding uselessly against the canopy of his plane, the taste of salt in his mouth, his own pounding blood and ragged breathing.
On the nights his dreams are instead stained by fires and screaming and the whistles of gunfire and bombs, he's actually grateful. He hates himself for that, too.
If his slumber is merciful, he dreams of home, or friends, or a bright future.
Or nothing at all—least not that he can recall—which is becoming the most preferable.
Lately however, the nights he spends drowning have become something darker. Instead of water grabbing at him, it's hands. Dozens of them, gangly and gaunt and pale, with an air of death about them. They pull at him, dragging him down until the surface is an unreachable glittering veil above his head.
His own hands reach towards the freedom of open air, clawing at the phantom fingers that take hold of his shoulders and arms and wrap around his neck. They dig at his clothes and deep into flesh until he sees red swirling in the water.
Something tells him these hands are omens, or painful reminders of their dead. The hands of friends and allies and enemies alike.
These nights are the worst. He's been told he rolls and groans and even occasionally kicks in his sleep.
This night is no different.
But, as his open mouth fills with water to silence his scream, another pair of hands—bigger, stronger—latches onto him, wrapping around his body in a hold that is solid and secure. In the fervour of his fits he lashes out at these ones with the same desperation.
Except these hands are corporeal, fighting against his flailing from outside of his dream. He knows them.
When he startles awake, it's to Farrier's familiar weight pressed up at his back, arms around his body, and those hands—one at his middle, the other running through matted strands of blond hair.
"Collins," It’s whispered into the shell of his ear, distant over the heaviness of his breathing and the drumbeat of blood. "It's alright, you're alright."
Farrier repeats the words, and his name, first and last, over and over; a quiet mantra beckoning to him.
"I can't... I'm... drowning..." The words shudder from his mouth.
Water lingers in his lungs and the bone-deep chill of the deep shudders through his limbs. He can't open his eyes. A primal fear clutches at his senses.
"You're not," Farrier assures him. "You're not. You're alive, and you're safe. I'm right here with you."
Even when his eyes finally open, he's met only with darkness. But at last he's breached the surface, gasping for air. He grips at the sheets, licking dry lips and wiping at cold sweat.
Farrier stays quiet, either a mercy or out of pity.
How many nights have they done this? Too many for Collins not to burn with guilt and shame at his own helplessness. His mind is tearing itself apart.
His days feel so normal, so caught up in the fight that it's frustrating when he can't completely shake the fear at night.
"Back with me?" Farrier says after a time.
His heart beats steady and strong against Collins' back, breathing slow and deep as if willing him to follow along to ease down from the night terrors.
Finally, with a shuddering breath, Collins says, "Aye, I'm fine. You can let go."
It's stifling. Hot breath burns across his neck and an electric itch crawls under his skin.
Stinging in his palms draws his eyes down to find deep crescents carved from his own nails. Farrier's arm around his waist has a few faded red marks too; evidently where Collins had clawed at him in his confused throes.
"Let me hold you a while longer," Farrier says, regardless.
His fingers continue to comb through Collins' hair. The softness of his touch is blissful as a dream in and of itself.
Farrier doesn't bring up the nightmares anymore. Collins has pretty well told him about all of them anyways, but he's stopped asking him to relive the memories in his walking hours.
They lie there in the dark listening to the monotonous tick of the clock on the nightstand. The hand in his hair is soothing enough it almost puts Collins back to sleep, but he jolts awake the moment he feels himself falling again.
"Do you want me to leave?" Farrier asks as Collins continues to fidget in his arms.
"No, it's fine." If he's alone, he'll float off and drown again. "You don't have to."
Farrier sighs with calm satisfaction. "Alright, I'll stay a while, then."
There's a long bout of quiet, but it's unsettled, like the air itself has turned heavy. Something in those words stirs up a thought that frequently hovers in the recesses of Collins' mind after these dreams of a lonely death. He doesn't mean to say it aloud, but it slips out.
"And what about after?"
A pause. "After?"
"After the war. When it's over, will you stay then, too?"
More silence follows, but he doesn't miss the short catch of breath behind him. The fingers in his hair stop, Farrier's arm falling flat on the bed, and Collins rests his head on it to stop him leaving. The hold around his waist tightens.
"I'd… certainly like to," Farrier says solemnly.
It's a long pause, one that tells Collins all he needs to know. "You won't promise, though."
"I don't know what's going to happen." It's the same thing he's said from the beginning.
I don't want either of us to be hurt, should the worst happen.
It's rational—something Collins understands. They are both proud and dedicated pilots, resolved to the reality of the possibility they could die any day. He doesn't really imagine anything more fanciful, anymore. Promises are presumptuous, even childish.
All the same, there's a foolish ache somewhere deep in his chest, not having some offer of light at the end of the tunnel. Some ideal little life together, an imagined secluded homestead nestled deep in the country, far from war and judgemental eyes. Far from the cadaverous hands of his nightmares.
"I'll stay for now, though," Farrier says. "As long as I can. How are you feeling?"
Collins slips his hand into Farrier's where it rests on the bed, eyeing the perfectly intricate way their fingers fold together, feeling the roughness of calluses. These hands are the ones that pull him from nightmares, ground him, love him. He never wants to lose this.
"Just... tired," he says.
A chuckle. Hot breath against the back of his neck. "I'm not surprised. Try and sleep. I'll be here."
That should be a comfort. It is, in some sense, if only because it's Farrier. It's familiar.
Even so, Collins thinks of the menacing hands of his dreams, and can't help but feel they have succeeded in drowning him.
He hears the word first, loud over the radio static and the persistent rush of blood through his veins, so startling he's momentarily distracted from the 109 he's chasing.
Farrier swore. He rarely swears.
The only thing that follows his sudden outburst is a strangled, "I'm hit."
Collins cranes his head all around, trying to make sense of every plane around him—enemy and friendly—against the backdrop of a deep blue sky and wisps of cloud and a maze of vapour trails.
Over the R/T there's grunts and distressed breathing, and it sends a cold shiver down Collins' spine. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he winces against the sun as he banks to keep on his target.
Trying to focus, trying not to think about...
Another yell. It's Farrier again. Someone in the Flight calls out his name.
Finally Collins catches sight of him when his bandit banks left, and he pulls a head-splitting turn to follow.
Farrier's engine has taken a hit. The nose is engulfed in dark smoke and fire, kicking back a cloud of scorching flame into the cockpit, spewing from the canopy that's been forced open.
"Farrier," he breaths down the radio, weak, his voice caught dry. Biting the inside of his cheek he waits for a reply with only half an eye on his enemy.
He doesn't get one. Collins tries again, and again, each utter of his name more desperate than the last.
Everything is moving so fast, and at a distance he can only just make out Farrier struggling as his plane rapidly loses altitude. The engine fire eats into the cockpit just as he finally manages to climb free, devouring the controls, his radio, the instruments.
Every part of Collins' body vibrates, from his head to his heart to his hands to his feet.
Never one to put much stock in a God, he still finds himself conjuring up prayers to any omniscient being who might be listening.
When the enemy 109 finally angles back across his gun sight, he crushes down on the firing button aggressively, bullets clattering across the tail plane and wing, and his target banks off out of his way again.
When he looks back, Farrier's free-falling, his Spitfire plummeting like a flaming star to earth, and Collins' heart leaps into his throat.
Only when he sees the parachute does he realize he's still in the fight, and he chases down his wounded enemy until he's used up the last of his rounds bringing it down.
By the time he’s back on the ground for good, in the last hour of daylight, he’s heard no news.
It's the longest wait of his life.
Longer than the days following Dunkirk, when Collins had no hope of seeing him again.
Longer than when by some miracle of deliverance Farrier had made it home, and Collins had endured hours and hours until they were alone and Farrier could finally kiss him again.
By nightfall he's sitting out on the steps of the Mess Hall with a cigarette hanging between his lips and his mind lost far beyond the war. He'd be pacing still, if his legs weren't sore from doing just that for the last couple hours. He almost wishes they'd been scrambled more that day, so he'd had something to do besides stew in his own anxiety. Maybe take it out on an enemy he's convinced himself deserves his anger.
A few vehicles come and go, personnel pass him by as the sun dips low past the horizon, and he remains unmoved, stuck in a daze from months of sheer exhaustion and stress.
It's been a week since his last fit of night terrors, but he refuses to sleep now. Not with Farrier's Spitfire burning away in his mind's eye, with him still inside.
So when his Flight commander is suddenly standing in front of him, he doesn't seem at all surprised to find Collins slumped against the railing, smoking through his pack, sullen and weary.
He's jolted by the news that Farrier is already back, and has been for almost an hour now. Apparently he'd been picked up by the Home Guard close to where he'd gone down.
Collins barely has time to catch his breath, but he’s wide awake by the time his commander says, "He's in the medical wing. The M.O.'s looking at him now."
He's never been on his feet so fast, as dizzy with adrenaline as he was in the skies.
It’s such a frenzy that when he makes it to the medical wing, trying to hide his urgency as he pushes open the door, it’s absurd that Farrier is just sitting there innocently on one of the beds, wide-eyed and watching Collins come barging in like it’s any other day.
Farrier says his name, barely above a whisper, but Collins can’t tear his eyes away from the red marks on his face, or the crisp white of bandages running up his legs, and down his forearms, and…
“Christ, your hands...”
His voice catches, before he can speak another word. Standing at the foot of the bed Collins watches the doctor work and ignores the scolding for his abrupt intrusion. Farrier won't stop watching him with veiled concern.
"Mostly superficial," the medical officer tells them once he’s done treating the wounds. "Shouldn't even need a hospital."
The flash burns to Farrier’s face aren’t worrying; simply redness from the heat, but his legs, arms and hands had caught the brunt of the flames when the fuel tank had blown. If he hadn't been so layered up for high-altitude flying, if he hadn’t already been climbing free of the cockpit, the burns would probably have been more serious.
It’s all very clinical, and it does little to make Collins feel better, because of his goddamn hands. The ones that had held him and caressed him and pulled him apart and put him back together.
Once they’re left alone, he perches at the side of Farrier's bed, slumped with his elbows on his knees, staring blankly at the bandages.
“You’ll probably have scars,” he mutters. It's all he can think to say just then.
Farrier hums, flexing his bound hands, but aside from the twinges of pain evident on his face when he moves, he looks surprisingly calm about the whole thing. “Probably. My legs will be the worst, but the rest shouldn’t be too bad. I made it out in time.”
That seems to be their whole life, lately; everything just in the nick of time. Life or death is a matter of seconds; often even less than that. They’d already lost a couple men in engine fires; a horrific memory full of screaming until you're begging for their death just to put an end to it.
Farrier’s Spit going up with him still inside was like reliving that all over again. With Collins, helpless to do anything but watch—a feeling he hasn't felt since Dunkirk.
All perceptions of Farrier's seeming indestructibility have flown right out the window.
“You can’t fly." Nausea turns Collins' stomach, but it’s an anxiousness he’d learned to quash down months ago.
The thought puts a sour look on Farrier’s face. “For now, no. At least a week, maybe two, they said. It’s a rotten time for it.”
A small mercy, perhaps. He'd be grounded for good if the burns had done permanent damage.
In some sense, that's what scares Collins the most to think about: how Farrier would react if he couldn't do the one thing he'd been practically born to do. A pilot through and through, a man made for the skies.
A lot can happen in a couple weeks. They share a look, and the silence is deafening.
While they're alone, Collins takes the opportunity to set his hand carefully over Farrier's bandaged one, curling fingers gently around his palm, brushing his thumb over the knuckles. The fabric is rough and cold, making his touch foreign and unsatisfying.
“It could have been worse,” Farrier says like that makes a difference; like it makes this all simpler.
It doesn’t. In fact, it’s more frustrating. 'A little worse' means he could have lost the use of his hands entirely, or he could have been blinded, or he may have never escaped the burning remains of his plane at all.
‘Could have been worse’ is the end of everything, one way or another.
“That’s not what I want to hear right now,” Collins mumbles, pulling Farrier's hand up to his lips and pressing a kiss to the bandages. It’s not as comforting as he wants it to be.
If they were back in the barracks, he’d settle himself into bed next to Farrier, pressed up tight with those unmarred hands holding him close as they had so many times before. Lost in the simple heat of each other, tucked into a small bunk and hidden from the world for a few blissful hours of passion or rest or quiet whispers.
The only normalcy they could possibly have in all this chaos. A constant reminder that they still have each other.
Farrier sits forward, holding his gaze with an intensity that has shaken his heart many nights before. “I don’t like the idea of not being up there with you.”
Collins smiles, but his eyes betray his unease. “I don't like it much either, not having you on my wing. But I waited for you to come home. Guess it's your turn, now.”
He doesn’t mean it to sound accusatory, though he worries Farrier will take it as such when he says nothing. Instead, the bandaged hand pulls out from under his own only to settle on his shoulder, and Collins is pulled into a kiss, hard and fierce and bruising, until he's forgotten how to breathe. He clings like a drowning man, dizzy and desperate.
“Promise me,” Farrier whispers against his lips, “you’ll come back. Every day, ever sortie. You come back to me, you understand?”
The hypocrisy of it would be laughable, in any other circumstance. Farrier, the realist; the one who tells Collins he fears envisioning a future because of the threat of death that hangs over their heads.
Here he is with an impassioned plea, the truth within his heart. A bold declaration of his own wants, now that he feels the sting of helplessness for himself.
There's nothing I fear losing more than you.
Collins presses into him, into gentle hands and soft lips. “We don’t make promises, remember?”
“I know, but I will this time,” Farrier says earnestly. “Just this once, since I won't be there. Please, I need you to..."
I need to know you always intend to come back to me. That you want to. That you'll try.
It's a needless request, as far as Collins is concerned. He’d do most anything Farrier asked of him. As easily as breathing.
But, he promises anyway, seals it with another kiss, and he keeps that close to his chest through every flight, every dogfight, every bullet he fires and every one that's returned.
He never comes back with stories, and after the first few days, it's clear Farrier is grateful for his discretion. Having him back alive and well suits him enough.
On the occasions when his dreams turn dark, Collins is spared the feeling of hands pulling him under again.
Two weeks later, when Farrier is back flying with the squadron, his hands do indeed bear the faint scars of his brush with death, but also carry the hidden promise that was laid over them.
That night, in the safety of their room, dogged by exhaustion and phantom sensations of rolls and turns and dives, Collins presses his lips to each of those scars. To the hands that have given and taken so much from him.