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Dark. Warm. Close... too close. Martin’s skin is clammy, his limbs are stiff and uncooperative. Where...? Douglas. Douglas was here, where is... oh God, his head hurts. Carolyn. Arthur. Douglas.
He tries to open his eyes, but they’re gritty and his eyelids are heavy. He tries to move his arms, but they’re bound behind his back. The rope chafes his wrists, and he stops moving. Tries opening his eyes again. No luck. The air feels stale and suffocating at the same time.
He tries to breathe, tries to remember. Carolyn, angry. Men... three, four, men with knives and machine guns. Arthur whimpering. Martin has seen machine guns before, soldiers patrolling at international airports. Never up close. So close.
Douglas, trying to reason. Spanish, Martin thinks, of course Douglas would know Spanish.
He manages to pry his eyes open, just a crack. It makes very little difference.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Martin thinks he should be panicking. Or maybe he is panicking, he can’t really tell. He can’t do anything. Just wait. Wait and wait and... if only his head didn’t hurt so much. If he could just remember...
Voices, harsh, commanding, shouting orders at him. Confusion. Martin doesn’t speak Spanish.
“Down,” Douglas says, face serious. Douglas is rarely serious. “Get down, Martin. Hands on your head. Follow my lead.”
Martin kneels, legs shaking, eyes darting from Douglas to the men with the guns and back, panic squeezing his throat shut. Say something, something clever, something that will make them go away...
“Please,” he manages, voice rasping. Douglas hushes him with a tense look, but there is understanding in his eyes.
Martin’s legs are cramping, and his head feels too heavy for his neck to hold up. Where are the others? He tries to call out, but his voice is thin and thready and has no volume. His throat is dry. He tries to swallow, but his mouth is dry, too.
Panic is starting to set in now, being pushed to the forefront of his addled mind. His lizard brain urges fight or flight, instructions he’s incapable of following at the moment. Adrenaline courses through his system, heart hammering in his throat and breath coming in short gasps.
Flying. The endless blue sky, the clouds, GERTI soaring thousands of miles above the earth. His hands on the controls, his voice floating through the cockpit. A word game. Douglas, supremely confident, suggesting they make things a little more interesting. “Not for money,” Martin hears himself say. “The Emmental.”
“Roquefort,” Douglas says just as Arthur bounds in with coffee and an endless supply of cheeriness.
He takes a deep breath, then another. Be calm. Collected. You’re the Captain.
Captain dons cap, he thinks, and dissolves into high-pitched, uncontrollable giggles that sound hysterical even to his own ears. Giggles turn into great, heaving sobs, tremors wracking his frame.
Eventually, the tremors subside and the sobs turn into wet sniffling noises. He feels oddly empty, drained of all emotion. Gradually, his breathing evens out, his head slumps to his chest, and he slips into unconsciousness.
A noise wakes him, loud, sudden. A door bangs, voices shout. Heavy footsteps approach. Bright light floods the cramped space. He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain, white spots dancing behind his eyelids.
There is a thump, followed by shuffling noises. Then, “Martin.”
Douglas. Martin forces his eyes open. The harsh light stings, but then the door is thrown shut and he is once more covered in darkness.
“Douglas,” Martin croaks. He tries to clear his throat, but it’s parched. “Is... is that you?”
He blinks furiously, eyes trying to readjust to the darkness. He can just make out a shape somewhere to his left.
“Yes, Martin, it’s me.” Douglas doesn’t sound smug or amused or any of the things that Douglas should sound like. His voice is pained and he’s taking shallow, laboured breaths.
“Douglas,” Martin chokes. Emotion threatens to overwhelm him, relief warring with concern and fear. The corners of his eyes feel suspiciously wet.
Douglas will get them out of this. Douglas will do something clever, something Martin would never have thought of, and convince their kidnappers to let them go. Except... Douglas is in here, with Martin, and he appears to be hurt. This is serious, so much more serious than anything they’ve come up against before. Even Douglas can’t scheme his way out of this one.
“Are you alright, Martin?” Douglas asks, and Martin wants to scoff, because Douglas is the one who’s hurt, and obviously Martin isn’t alright, not even a little bit, but what he blurts out is “Did they hurt you?”
He tries to get a better look at Douglas, but the room is too dark and his eyesight is blurred. Douglas is only a few feet away, slumped against the wall, hands and feet bound, but Martin can barely make out more than a silhouette.
“Merely a few bruised ribs,” Douglas says, obviously trying for nonchalance. “I don’t believe anything’s broken.”
“They hit you?” He hears his own voice crack on the word “hit”.
“Not very hard, I promise. Carolyn’s tirades pack more of a punch than these fellows. Though, granted, hers are always of a verbal nature.”
“Carolyn... Arthur. Are they... where did they take them?”
Douglas grunts. “They’re no better off than we are. Hopefully no worse, either. I think I managed to convince our hosts not to separate them, at least.”
Martin doesn’t know what to say. This is all so very far outside his sphere of experience. He desperately doesn’t want to break down and cry, not with Douglas sitting a few feet away, so he concentrates on taking deep breaths.
“Martin,” Douglas says. He sounds short of breath. “It’s going to be fine.”
Something inside Martin breaks. “You can’t say that,” he hisses. “This isn’t something you can talk us out of! Those men out there are going to kill us, and I’ll never...” he cuts himself off abruptly, unsure of what he meant to say.
Neither of them speaks for a while. There are noises beyond the door of their darkened prison: footsteps, voices, but none of them moving in their direction. Yet.
“I’m going to die here,” Martin whispers hoarsely. “We’re going to die, and nothing I can say or do matters anymore, does it?”
“You’re taking a rather bleak view of the situation, Captain,” Douglas says, but he sounds drained. “Perhaps... perhaps not an incorrect one, though. Although if we do by some miracle manage to escape this godforsaken place, I will vehemently deny ever having said that, if only...” he pauses to catch a strained, wheezing breath. “If only because I can’t have it known that I agreed with you. On anything. It’s a matter of principle, you see.”
“You sod,” Martin grins despite himself, despite everything. “Sometimes I wonder why I fancy you.”
The silence that falls is deafening.
“Um, I mean, that is to say,” he stammers. “Oh, sod it. If we’re going to die anyway, I might as well say it. I fancy you a bit. Alright, a lot. After that time in St. Petersburg I started thinking, we could have died, and... and now we’re going to die here in the jungle instead. So, now you know,” he says, sticking his chin out defiantly even as his jaw wobbles.
“Martin,” Douglas says. “Your atrocious sense of timing aside... I appreciate the sentiment. Were I in a position to do so, I’d kiss you.”
“You’d... kiss me?” Martin asks, gobsmacked.
“Indeed I would. It is customary, you know, when two people discover that they are mutually attracted to one another.”
“You’d kiss me,” Martin says. His brain seems to be a bit stuck on that.
“Yes,” Douglas agrees patiently.
They sit in silence for a while. Martin’s head is spinning. Douglas likes him. Would kiss him. He’s likely going to die before that has a chance to happen. The hopelessness of the situation is like a physical pain, stabbing at his innards.
“You know, if we do get out of this, and if you were to kiss me... I’d kiss you back,” Martin says eventually.
“I’d rather imagined that, yes,” Douglas says, and Martin can almost hear the smug grin. Usually, any sign of that grin would make Martin grit his teeth and roll his eyes, but right now it’s the best thing he could have wished for. If Douglas is smug, then at least there’s one thing still right with the world.
His relief is short-lived, however. Every intake of Douglas’ breath sounds like a struggle now, and it is becoming increasingly clear to Martin that without medical help, Douglas may not have much time left.
“Martin,” Douglas gasps. “I want you to know... I regret it.”
Martin blinks furiously against the stinging in his eyes. “Regret what?” he whispers hoarsely, desperately.
“Regret... not having kissed you,” Douglas wheezes.
Martin wants to say something, anything, tell Douglas it’s alright, he’ll have his chance later, but the words stick in his throat.
Suddenly, there’s shouting outside, shortly followed by shouts from inside the building. The sound of heavy boots pounding on concrete. Then: gunfire.
Martin is paralyzed with fear, but no-one enters their cell.
“Police,” Douglas rasps. “It’s the police, Martin.”
Martin opens his eyes, then immediately closes them against the harsh light. Bright spots dance behind his eyelids. He has a droning headache, and his throat feels like sandpaper.
“Skip? Skip, are you awake?”
Arthur.
“Arth...” he rasps. He clears his throat, tries again. “Arthur. Douglas...”
“He’s fine, Skip. Well, no, he’s not fine, actually, but the doctors say he will be. Fine, I mean. And so will you, and mum, and me. Isn’t it brilliant?”
Arthur’s brittle cheerfulness is more than Martin can take.
“Where’s Carolyn?” he asks, briefly wondering when Carolyn became the preferable option.
“She just went to get some coffee, and a hot chocolate for me. I love vending machine hot chocolate, don’t you? It tastes--”
“Brilliant,” Martin mutters. He tries to lever himself into an upright position, a move his body protests vehemently.
“I was going to say “kind of like wet cardboard”, but you’re right, it is brilliant!”
“Arthur, stop pestering the poor boy,” Carolyn says sternly, entering the room with two steaming styrofoam cups in hand. “He’s had a bad enough time of it without being subjected to your constant yammering.”
The way she tenderly runs her hand through her son’s hair as she hands him his hot chocolate belies her harsh words.
“Carolyn... what happened?” Martin’s head is a blur.
Carolyn sits down on one of the wobbly plastic chairs next to Martin’s bed. Arthur nervously bounces next to her, until she snaps at him to “Please take the other chair and stop flapping about like a demented penguin”.
Arthur obeys, but his legs are still bouncing up and down.
“Sorry, mum,” he says when Carolyn frowns at him. She heaves a sigh before turning to Martin, but says no more of it.
“It appears our captors were part of a smuggling ring. The police had been on their trail for some time. We were... insurance, if you like.” She pulls a face.
“The gunshots...” Martin trails off, unsure of what to ask.
Carolyn’s face turns grim. “Those thugs thought I would make a good hostage. They thought wrong.”
“She elbowed one of them in the gut,” Arthur pipes up. He sounds confused, and more than a little bit in awe.
“Bastard wasn’t expecting that from a little old lady,” Carolyn says, grimly self-satisfied. “None of them were. The police got them in the confusion.”
“They had guns!” Martin gapes. “You could have been killed!”
Carolyn’s gaze is steely. “They had you two. They had Arthur.”
Martin pretends not to notice the way her hands tremble around her coffee cup.
Every bone in Martin’s body seems to protest as he lowers himself into the chair next to Douglas’ bed. Everything hurts. His muscles are stiff from being forced into the same position for so long, and his wrists are sore where the rope chafed them. There’s a dull thudding in his head that refuses to abate.
“If this is heaven, I must say it doesn’t quite live up to its reputation.” Douglas’ voice is hoarse, barely more than a whisper, but it startles Martin out of his reverie. He sits up, then winces as the muscles in his back and shoulders protest.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” he says, suddenly awkward.
“Nor did I, up until a few moments ago.” Pause. “It’s good to see you, Martin.”
Martin ducks his chin, blushing. “You too,” he mumbles. “We, ah. Carolyn saved us,” he adds. “We’re in Buenaventura, we’re being flown home tomorrow.”
“Being flown?” Douglas asks, affronted.
“Well, I have a concussion and you have a number of cracked ribs... wait, that’s the part you pick up on? Not the whole ‘Carolyn saving us’ bit, but the bit about Cal Air flying in to pilot GERTI back to England with us as passengers?”
“Cal Air? You don’t mean Herc--” Douglas starts, but his protest is interrupted by a coughing fit.
Martin rolls his eyes. “It’s nice to see your ego is still intact.”
He’s aiming for flippancy, but the jitters in his stomach are making him queasy. You nearly died. I told you I fancy you. Oh, God.
Douglas’ coughing subsides, and he manages to prop himself upright with significant effort. Martin wants to reach out to help him, but he stops himself just in time. Douglas hates acknowledging any kind of weakness; he wouldn’t take kindly to Martin’s help.
“I suppose Herc will just have to make himself useful for once,” Douglas concedes with ill grace. His brow is furrowed, dual expressions of pain and annoyance warring on his face. Martin is momentarily flooded with the urge to take that face into his hands and kiss away all the stress lines, one by one.
His internal debate about whether to act on his impulse or squash it down ruthlessly --the way he’s done countless times before, but things have changed now, haven’t they? Does Douglas even remember-- is cut off when Douglas reaches out and takes his hand, giving it a little squeeze.
“Martin, when I said... what I said, about regrets... I meant it.”
Martin has to clear his throat before he finds himself able to speak. “So did I.”
Before he knows it he’s leaning in, their mouths meeting with barely any hesitation. Warm. Close. Douglas squeezes his hand again, and Martin squeezes back.
They may not be back in England yet, but Martin feels like he has finally come home.