Work Text:
Sometimes - mostly at times like this, when the better days had been steadily outnumbering the worse, when it'd been a week, two weeks, three, since the last bad time - Algy wondered if, perhaps, the worse days weren't - well, better.
Better for him, that is: he didn't imagine for a moment that they were better for Biggles. And he only wondered it fleetingly before catching himself, reminding himself that it was just the boredom talking, just the smart of a put-down that Biggles would more than likely apologise for before too long. Just the frustration of fidgeting about Charles' flat, when he would pick up a book here, fiddle with the wireless there, and settle to nothing. Just the lack of that sourly addictive fix of being needed.
It still was Charles' flat, for all that he and Biggles had been sharing it on and off, more or less officially, for nearly a decade now: not Biggles' flat, not Algy's flat, certainly not their flat. The books were still Charles' books, or at least the ones he tended to pick up were, although they had been supplemented by piles of Biggles' gazetteers and clippings files. The furniture was still Charles' furniture. Charles' mismatched glasses were in the sideboard, his ashtrays brimmed with their cigarette ash, his scorch marks were still visible on the hearth-rug. It was only that his pictures had been taken from the walls, and his clothes from the wardrobes: boxed up and hidden away.
Biggles didn't seem to mind. Biggles didn't much care to make an impression on his surroundings.
Biggles managed to entertain himself, of course, as he always had. Algy would fidget, pace, pop out for a paper, a play, a quick drink with an acquaintance, a breath of fresher air in the park, until Biggles grumbled at him that he didn't need to be forever 'popping' anywhere, he could just go out like any other human being. That was how the 'better' days went, unless they had a job; and that was when he found himself thinking at least on the bad days he doesn't look at me like he can't fathom why I'm here, and that was when he was ashamed of himself.
Then one of the worse days would happen, and he would remember just why they were worse.
During those first awful years after the war he'd felt that he had grown quite skilled at spotting when an attack was imminent. There were the habits, the indulging of which tended to lead to a relapse: the great heaps of books he read for hour after hour after hour because you don't understand, I've got to be prepared; the skipped meals, interminable nights, keeping himself alive on biscuits and tobacco and Scotch and coffee; the hours on hours on hours at the window, fingers clutched into the curtain fabric, just watching the street. Some kinds of weather (when the smog clutched in the throat); some times of year (a certain copper-brilliant summer sky). Loud noises, at first; unexpected noises, always. Sustained stress. Sustained concentration.
Maybe he had got out of practice, or maybe the attacks really were less predictable now. Two months, three, their ordinary little lives ticking over, and then out of the blue -
It was a month after their return from Berlin, and it was the crash that woke him, not the usual muffled cry, startling him awake with his heartbeat pounding in his temples and his feet already halfway to the floor; but then he made himself slow, gentling his movements, because the panicked rush of footsteps and creaking boards only made it worse. He began speaking before he tried Biggles' door, because he had been caught that way before; his words were meaningless, predictable litanies, because that was what was needed - slowness, gentleness, predictability, and a warning before he opened the door and flicked on the lights. All the things that no one would associate with France.
Biggles was in his usual place, in the corner beyond the headboard, crouched back into the angle of the wall where he could scan the whole room, dig his shoulderblades back into the plasterwork. The bedside lamp was in pieces, and that was probably what had set this off. To wake in the night, hot and tangled in bedsheets, disorientated and displaced, to reach out, to feel one's arm trapped, to tug, trying to free it, breath coming faster and harder, and then that awful crash -
It was nothing they had not done a hundred times before. Algy kept his voice soft and practical and easy, stayed within his field of vision, and waited until the wild eyes began to track his movement. Then he gave warning - I'm going to reach out to you, it's only me - and put his hand out to touch the updrawn knee. Often that was all it took to coax Biggles back into the here and now -
Except this time, when Biggles' eyes focussed on him and not on whatever nameless horror of 1917 had caught his attention this time, when his breathing stopped coming in those short animal pants, he looked at him for a moment, and then said, "What are you doing in here?"
"I heard the noise," Algy said. "The lamp fell over. It must have been one hell of a crash to have woken me up next door - I nearly had a fit of the hab-dabs myself."
"No, I mean - " Biggles interrupted him, and it was strange, disturbing to hear the ghost of his daytime coolness, but abraded, shaking. "Why did you have to come running in? Why do you always have to - "
And he made an odd, broken gesture, like a bird's dragging wing: himself, his room, the lamp.
"I don't mind - " Algy began, but his mouth was gummy and dry.
"Just - leave me to get some sleep, can't you?" said Biggles, pushing himself upright against the wall.
Algy found himself nodding as he stood, found that he couldn't quite stop reassuring. "Of course. See you in the morning."
"Turn the light off as you go," said Biggles, seating himself on the edge of the bed, making no move to lie down. His feet were bare - of course they were bare, Algy scolded himself, he probably hadn't been much inclined to hunt up his slippers. They were white against the green of the rug.
Then, as Algy reached for the switch: "It's not going to get better, you know. It's not going to go away."
Algy crept back to his room, feeling his way by the succession of smooth walls, architraves, corners of furniture, as he waited for his night vision to return. When he lay down again and pulled over himself the disordered heap of sheets, blankets, coverlets, eiderdown, he found that the patch where his feet fell was still warm. He lay there a long while, looking at the ceiling, heart thumping, and listening for the sound of Biggles getting up to fetch cigarettes and matches; but he heard nothing.
The next morning, when Biggles emerged at nearly noon, cigarette dangling from his lips and dark-smudged at the eyes, Algy got up from the table and the newspaper and busied himself with making coffee.
"If it's all the same to you, I think I'll dodge over to the continent for a couple of weeks," he said without preamble, fiddling with the little gas ring at the fireplace.
"Algy, I'm not your C.O., your house master, or your mother," said Biggles around the cigarette, as he replenished his case from the box on the dining table. "You don't have to ask my permission."
"I'm not asking permission," Algy said, and could already hear his own annoyance. "I just thought you might wonder where I was if you noticed my absence after, say, a week or two."
"Someone got out of bed the wrong side," Biggles muttered.
"You're a fine one to - " Then he caught himself. "You see, that's exactly why I need a holiday. I'm bored. You're bored. We're both bored, and we're boring each other. If I don't get out of London again soon they'll arrest me frothing at the mouth in Kensington Gardens for trying to tear down the Albert Memorial with my teeth out of sheer ennui."
Biggles hooked the middle pages of the paper from the table, and retreated with them to his favourite armchair. "I'm not bored."
He counted to five. "Bully for you, then."
"Isn't it a bit early for your annual debauch on the Riviera?" Biggles asked, rustling the pages into a wall in front of his face. "Surely none of your usual cronies will be in town?"
"A month of tennis and sailing is hardly a debauch, unless your standards are very low. And yes, it's too early for anyone much to be there." He heaped grounds from the tin into the pot, and topped it up with hot water. "I thought I might go back to Berlin for a while, actually."
"Your new friends invited you to stay?"
"I don’t - " It shouldn't be possible to be put on the defensive so many times in a single conversation, especially when one had so little to be defensive about. "No. It's a nice city, as you might have noticed if you'd bothered sticking your nose outside the hotel lobby for longer than it took to hail a cab to the airfield."
The pages shuffled. "Well, enjoy yourself."
"You could come along, if you want."
"Mmm."
"Or if you've got a job lined up you need me here for, I can easily put it off. As I said, I don't have anything special planned."
"You know I don't. You should go."
Algy summoned up a grin. "It should be a holiday for you too - just imagine, not having to put up with Turandot on the gramophone for three whole weeks."
Biggles half folded down the top of the paper, and cast him a look over the top - only enough to see his eyes, not his mouth, not his expression. "There is that."
And Algy brought him over a cup of coffee; snagged a cigarette from the open case at Biggles' right hand; and went back to the half a newspaper Biggles had left for him. His hands were only shaking a very little.
The coming of morning hadn't stopped the thoughts that had kept him awake. He couldn't stop thinking of that first time that von Stalhein had sought him out in England: that night when Biggles had been deep in the worst of it, and he had fled the flat out into the mist and rain because he was so angry, with everybody and everything, and he couldn't let Biggles see him so angry, just because he couldn't help, and Biggles couldn't change. That night when von Stalhein had asked him the question that no one else had: even if things do change, even if he gets better - what then?
He will make you suffer every day for the fact that he needed you.
He didn't doubt that Biggles loved him. He had never doubted that, not in all the sleepless, shaking nights, not in the face of the spitting anger, the cold contempt. It was as impossible to doubt as his own love for his cousin. And every time he had been tempted to run away, it had been that which dragged him back.
But love apparently didn't preclude shame, and bitterness, and resentment; and as the crippling need for him faded, the shame and resentment grew.
And what then?
He could hear the words, as clearly and distinctly as if von Stalhein had spoken them as well - as if Biggles had said them last night, as for a moment he had been certain he would.
He wouldn't want him here. Biggles was stubborn, self-reliant, self-contained. He couldn't bear the fact that he had needed. That Algy kept seeing him at his worst. And one day -
Go away. I'm sick of you always being here.
Better to go than to be told to leave. Better anything than make Biggles tell him -
"It'll only be a couple of weeks," he told himself, wrapping his hands tight around his coffee.
* * *
Algy ducked back into cover and swore, copiously. Another shot whined and ricocheted off the crumbling brickwork a few inches from his head. "Does this sort of thing normally happen on your jobs?"
"Not normally, no,” said von Stalhein, imperturbably. "Does it normally happen on yours?"
Algy reflected for a moment, while part of his mind tried to recollect whether that was a whole clip that had been fired, or whether they were still a shot or two short. "Actually, more often than not."
"Then I think we know at whose door responsibility can be laid."
"You're the one - " He picked up a stray sheet of newspaper from the litter at his feet, balled it up, and tossed it down the alley; he was rewarded with a further shot. " - who agreed to take the job in the first place. Jumpy lot, aren't they? Do you make that seven shots from each?"
"I do," said von Stalhein. "But that is not to say that they will have only one clip apiece."
He was pressed back as far as possible into the closed and padlocked doorway of a warehouse, and Algy was pressed back as far as possible into him, trying to keep the dubious shelter of the door-jamb between him and the two men with guns who had them thoroughly pinned down in this stinking bloody cul-de-sac somewhere in this bloody maze of warehouses in this bloody wasteland of a dock in the arse-end of the bloody ex-German empire.
Algy could feel von Stalhein’s breath against the back of his neck: every breath, slightly too fast, against the sticky stillness of the night air.
Things had, predictably, gone about as wrong as they could go.
"Better get on before they reload then," said Algy, manically cheerful.
"Do you have a gun?"
"Of course I don't! I hardly thought I'd need - "
He felt the movement behind him, heard the precise click of ammunition being snapped home, before the butt of the automatic was held out to him over his shoulder.
" - unlike you, evidently," Algy finished. "You might have warned me."
"I had no reason to think it would be necessary."
"You just carry a gun as a matter of course?"
"Naturally."
Algy grimaced. "Biggles would have kittens."
"Unfortunately, he is not here. Now, if you would take the damn gun and provide a little covering fire - "
Algy couldn't help but grin at the note of clipped frustration in the normally even voice. "I've a better idea. You provide a little covering fire, and I'll be back in a jiffy."
And, with that last glimpse of von Stalhein's expression of dawning surprise and that last hissed 'Captain Lacey - !' in his ears, he ducked out of shelter and made a scrambling leap for the heavy iron drainpipe that terminated a few feet away on the other side of the alley. A shout - a shot - another - but the scudding clouds and pale moon made poor light for shooting, and then came the crack of von Stalhein's pistol to give their attackers something else to concentrate on. He tried not to wonder how many clips von Stalhein would have thought to bring with him; tried not to wonder how quickly he could reload; tried not to count the shots. He set his teeth, and climbed.
The moonlight was on his back, his shadow on the pipe, so he felt for each support, flakes of paint and rust catching on his skin, under his nails. Sturdy enough, at any rate, providing enough finger and toe holds to inch his way up, like climbing the great apple tree under the nursery window -
Not much point trying to seek official help. Whatever faith he'd had in the legality of their job here, it was fading by the second; and even if the job had been a model of spotless rectitude, it would be hard to lay hands on a helpful official closer than the British Colonial Police in Dar Es Salaam, and he'd rather return with help before von Stalhein ended up a bullet-ridden corpse in a back alley -
- concentrate on the climb, not on the shots, not on the moon on his back, not on the thought of von Stalhein in a puddle of night-black blood, he might not like the man much but there were limits, only a few more inches to the roof -
No telling if the two men who had interrupted the pick-up were the only ones they had to worry about, but he'd bet his wings they weren't. There'd be some sort of watch kept on the plane at least, someone to keep Hofner pinned down, and he'd need von Stalhein to help deal with that - two men with a gun would stand a much better chance than one unarmed -
He pulled himself over the parapet at last, but there was no time just to lie there and wheeze as he so desperately wanted. Up onto his feet again, keeping low, feeling exposed as hell against the skyline, keeping up a shambling run, aware of the crunching shifting grit under his shoes. He peered through every skylight as he passed it, but it was hard to make out much in the gloom. Storage, storage, crates of who knew what, endless bales of Sisal hemp, not much use to him unless he set fire to the lot and that was surely a little extreme for a diversion, though he wouldn't discount it out of hand -
The shots ceased. He stopped, one second, two seconds, for God's sake, they're making enough noise to wake the dead, doesn't anyone live around here?, three seconds, his heart pounding in his temples, even von Stalhein might not have prepared for this, might not have another clip -
Another shot. Algy swallowed, and ran on.
He reached the end of the run of low warehouses, knelt on the still-warm brick of the parapet, took hold of the gutter, and swung himself over the edge. He dropped to the full extent of his arms, feeling the muscles strain, very aware of the loudness of his breathing. Then he let go. He rolled with the drop, choking in dust, cursing the hollow crash as he hit the corrugated iron roof of the lower building that propped itself shanty-style against the brick-built wall, but he came up to his feet again without more pain than he could manage and ran on.
Another skylight, and inside -
He squinted. Lit by the moonlight from above, a green velvet couch, a potted palm, and a painted backdrop with a view of the Alps.
He had just enough time to wonder if he’d finally cracked up, before he realised what it was. A photographer’s studio. Which meant the shadowed corner at the back, behind the stack of Japanese screens and trellises and plywood pillars, was the laboratory, and in the clutter of jars and bottles and tins -
He ran back to the corner of the warehouse, kicked a brick free of its crumbling mortar at the angle of the wall, returned to the skylight, brought it down with all his strength once, twice, three times -
He could still hear shots even after he dropped down onto the couch, and thank God for it, because that meant there was still someone for them to shoot at. He found a side-door which was only fastened with a bolt on the inside, and he threw it wide open before running back to the corner where he'd glimpsed the equipment. Working by moonlight and touch with shaking hands (no matches, not here, the thought was terrifying) he found the flash pan, the ceramic cork-stoppered jar with its double chambers, just like the ones he’d seen photographers use at home.
He grinned, gusts of breath coming through bared teeth, as set off at a stumbling run back towards the noise of the shots. He’d always fancied trying his hand at photography. What a perfect moment to start.
Shame he’d never had much of a chance to read up on it before now though. Of course, he’d heard stories about photographers who’d lost eyebrows, hair, hands, because of a badly mixed or badly handled flash powder, but he couldn’t think of that now, couldn’t think of his breath coming almost in sobs, or the pain in his shoulder where he’d landed on the roof -
His fingers were starting to go numb, shaking so much he could hardly pull the stopper out; but there should be time to fix that up later, to mop up the blood that was trickling down his arm and slicking his hand, mixing with the sweat in a sticky, slippery mess, unless of course he’d blown his arm off by then, and he narrowed his eyes and focussed on the two powders mixing on the pan -
Now.
"Hi! You over there!” he yelled in English at the top of his voice, and hoped it was enough to get them looking. “Cover your eyes!"
And he closed his own tight, and turned his head away, and covered his eyes and face as best he could with the other arm -
And pressed the trigger.
He’d picked out the flash with the longest handle he could find, but the force of the explosion still knocked him off his feet and left his ears ringing, and he could still see the edges of the blinding blue-white glare through his eyelids.
"Go!" he shouted.
He heard running footsteps, just as he began to run himself.
Shouts and darkness, but hopefully not as dark to the two of them as it would be to the men who had just looked straight at the incandescent glow of a flash powder burst.
He skidded to a halt a stone's throw from the sea, beside the last of the dock buildings. His lungs ached, his arm throbbed, but he was alive, and von Stalhein was alive too - bending almost double to catch his breath at Algy's side. Alive.
He swallowed down the thick spit which held his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and tried to catch his breath, quiet his noise. There was a man there, lurking in the shadows near the sea-plane; but only one. One they could deal with. He was nervous, surely, having heard the shots and the running footsteps; but Algy could pinpoint him by the glow-worm of his cigarette. Not nervous enough.
"You're hurt?" von Stalhein breathed.
"It can wait."
He nodded; then raised his pistol. Sighted.
Algy pushed his aim wide. "That's not necessary!"
"With a target that precise I can shoot to wound," he hissed. "Trust me. We hardly have time for subtlety."
He raised, sighted, fired, in a single smooth movement; and the man spun aside with a cry.
"Find out what has happened to Hofner," von Stalhein said rapidly. "I shall see to the cables. Better adrift than waiting here for reinforcements."
Algy was already moving though, ducking to check on the man von Stalhein had shot: a white man, he found to his surprise, and moreover one who swore at him in clear and copious German, but very definitely still alive, even with the spreading stain of blood high at his right shoulder.
"Hurry!" came von Stalhein's urgent command from the darkness; and Algy did.
There were no lights showing in the 'plane itself, and Algy took only an instant to think of the wonderful target he must be making of himself for anyone inside before he leapt for one of the floats. "Hofner!" he called. "If you've slept through this - "
A head emerged cautiously from the hatch. "Captain Lacey? You're not hurt?"
"I'm not hurt, and I'm not a Captain," Algy said, beginning to feel a little light-headed. "Have you got any company in there?"
"He's taking a little lie down, sir," came Hofner's prompt reply. "Looked round when he heard the Chief start shooting. Not the cleverest move he ever made."
"Well, dump him over the side and let's get out of here," said Algy. "You get the starter while we work on the props."
"Righto, sir."
"Oh - and good work, by the way."
"Thanks, sir!"
He helped Hofner drag the unconscious body of the last of their attackers out of the hatch, and as a concession to common humanity even made sure he was floating face upwards when they dropped him into the sea. Then he made his way along the sea-plane's foot to one of the propellers; and when he looked across, he found von Stalhein at the other.
"Can't hear anyone coming," he called across in a low voice.
"I hit one of them as he tried to follow you up to the rooftop," came von Stalhein's voice, floating incongruously soft across the dark water. "That may have discouraged them."
"You didn't kill him?"
"Of course not. Do you know the amount of trouble generated by killing a citizen of a British colony on their own soil?"
"I'm not sure they were all locals," said Algy. "One spoke better German than me. I think your Herr Fränkel may have some questions to answer."
"And I shall be sure to ask them."
Then Hofner shouted his readiness, and he put his hands to the propeller.
Later - when the engines had fired, and Algy had managed to unstick them from the millpond surface of the sea, taking off along a line of moon silver as straight as a searchlight - Hofner took the controls at von Stalhein's urging, and Algy was persuaded to allow his arm to be dressed.
"What in God's name did you do, punch your way through a window?" asked von Stalhein, somewhat absently, as he teased a sliver of glass from the cut.
"More or less, actually."
"I thought it was the Irish who had the reputation for madness."
Algy shrugged, or shrugged as much as von Stalhein's restraining grip would allow. "All Celtic fringe, I suppose."
Von Stalhein set aside the tweezers, apparently content with his work, and took up the cotton wool and iodine. "I must thank you."
"Thank me?"
"You may well have saved my life. You have certainly saved me from considerable inconvenience. And you have preserved my reputation for infallibility, which is a great service."
Algy smiled tightly, awkwardly, obscurely grateful that he could concentrate on the stinging dabs of the disinfectant and the efficient movements of von Stalhein's hands, rather than his words. "What on earth did you do before I signed up?" he said lightly.
"Oh, I simply ensured that anyone who suggested my reputation for infallibility might not be wholly accurate did not live to repeat the tale. Naturally."
"Naturally."
The cotton wool and iodine were set aside, the bandage taken up.
Algy hissed as von Stalhein wrapped it about his arm that necessary uncomfortable fraction too tight. "I'm not sure you’re paying me enough for this," he grumbled.
"I shall be sure to extract a small bonus from Herr Fränkel to recompense you for your trouble, never fear," said von Stalhein, in that uncharacteristically preoccupied voice. It was odd, Algy found, to have that steely concentration focussed on him but not on him - to be able to observe the narrowed, evaluating eyes without feeling his hackles rising under their weight.
Straight nose, thin lips, sunburnt skin; dark hair, already beginning to grey at the temples. Eyes the grey-blue of a winter sea. Just a man, when all was said and done.
Von Stalhein sat back on his heels, assessing his work critically in the light of the lamp; but he kept his hold on Algy's arm. "While I very much appreciate your resourcefulness in effecting our rescue tonight, I would nevertheless prefer you to remain in one piece in the future, if possible."
Algy opened and closed his hand a few times, spreading the fingers, testing the snugness of the bandage; but he didn't dislodge von Stalhein's grasp. "I'll bear that in mind."