Chapter Text
As many of Charles’ problems were, this particular one had been started by the Eton boys.
The office had felt unusually restless with Bevan in Tehran. His deputy Wheatley had been left in charge in his absence; while they both served as MI5’s air force representatives despite not one bit of aerial experience between them, Charles had quickly discovered that this was the only thing he and Wheatley had in common. He’d swiftly derailed the first committee briefing he’d attended in Bevan’s place to talk about his novels, and managed to put down both London’s working class and the idea of a university education in a single conversation. Fleming had never looked happier, but Charles had spent the whole meeting outraged.
“It is absolutely ludicrous, Jean. He spouts on about how providing welfare allowances to those struggling during the war would lead to social tyranny, and we’re expected to follow his orders?” Charles seethed, pacing up and down the cafeteria.
Jean let out a bitter sigh, leaning heavily against the meagrely stocked pantry. Charles had nearly knocked her over as he stormed back to the basement, and he’d promised her a cup of tea in retribution. “You know what they’re like though. They’re all the same, those Eton toffs. Can’t see the world beyond the end of their noses,” she muttered, arms crossed.
“It’s worse than that though,” Charles insisted, fists clenching as he struggled to put the notion into words. “He’s not flaunting his schooling over us, but his lack of schooling. Doesn’t he know what some people would do to for the opportunities he’s had? To have access to that kind of education only to throw it away?”
As he spoke it was Jean he looked at, but his younger self he thought of. Of his science teacher passing his mother a newspaper cutout advertising the local public school, of being told that ‘such potential couldn’t be wasted’. Of sitting awake long after bedtime, his ear to the floorboards as his mother sobbed to his older sisters that they could never afford such a thing. Of studying every day for the entrance exam until his vision blurred, of endless waiting. Until he finally held a scholarship letter in his hands.
“Those sorts never do,” Jean muttered.
Charles looked up at her, mirroring her sad smile when their eyes met. He knew he was one of the lucky ones; to have stumbled upon a ticket to the upper class whereas others like Jean still fought to even get into the room, let alone be listened to once there. But the cost was still high. Perhaps he’d never paid directly for his Oxford tuition, but he’d paid in the feeling of never quite belonging in the halls he walked daily.
Their commissary was interrupted by voices in the distance, as everyone else in the briefing room finally caught up with Charles’ swift exit. Charles felt himself tense automatically. It had been five years since he’d left Oxford, but he found himself still paying the same cost.
Wheatley himself rounded the corner first with Fleming trailing behind him like a devoted dog. He barely glanced at Charles and Jean as they swarmed on an empty table, Masterman and Reggie following predictably behind. “It’s June, isn’t it? Make us a tea, won’t you sweetheart? There’s a good girl.”
If looks could kill, Jean’s glare would have destroyed the man. “Yes sir,” she said through gritted teeth. Charles felt helpless as he watched her, torn between wanting to help her or stand up for her, but knowing all it would achieve would be putting himself in the firing line. Her own tea left forgotten, growing cold as she served their superiors.
“Ah, Cholmondeley. Come and join us, I want to pick those brains of yours.”
Charles grimaced for a moment before he managed to mask his feelings. It was still jarring to even hear his name from the likes of Wheatley, who had never bothered to remember it until it became tied to Mincemeat’s success. Cautiously he lowered himself into the seat between Fleming and Reggie, deliberately not tucking his chair beneath the table in case a second swift exit was warranted. “What can I help you with?” he asked mildly, hands clasped together on his lap.
Wheatley appeared to consider for a moment, rolling a cigar between his fingers. Charles could only hope for the sake of his allergies that he didn’t light it. “I presume you’ve heard that the draft deception I submitted to the High Command hasn’t exactly gone down as anticipated. Something about being too unrealistic to be believable,” he started, moving on before Charles could even consider an appropriate condolence. “Well, the chaps over at Ops B have got a new suggestion, and Bevan apparently thinks it would be prudent to run it past you before we agree.”
“Me?” Charles wheezed, taken too much by surprise to hear the insult in the words.
Reggie exchanged an unreadable look with Masterman. “Lots of similarities to Mincemeat: the Germans are expecting an invasion, no point in pretending otherwise. We just need to convince them that the invasion that’s happening isn’t happening, and another invasion that’s not actually happening is what’s happening,” Masterman said.
“And you were the brains behind the Operation, weren’t you bug boy?” Reggie snickered. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
The black hole of shame that opened up beneath his chair might have swallowed him whole, if firm hands hadn’t materialised upon his shoulders. “That’s our Charlie, hmm?” Monty said, followed by a very curt hum as he swept a challenging gaze around the table.
Charles stared at him as murmured greetings echoed around them. Monty’s hand found his under the table once he’d pulled up a chair, taking an exaggerated breath which Charles tried to consciously mirror. The black hole ebbed a little. He didn’t let go, just in case.
“Enough of all those secrets you two are keeping –”
Charles ripped his hand away from Monty’s as if it was burning.
“- how did you pull it off?” Wheatley asked. “All Bevan ever let slip was that there was a body. And that briefcase that your little floozy was running around with, what –”
“Excuse me?”
The cafeteria fell silent. Jean had frozen with her tea tray still in hand, a look on her face as if she’d just been slapped. Monty’s shoulders were set as he leaned back in his chair and looked at Wheatley, the very picture of dangerous quiet. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to refer to our esteemed colleague,” he remarked in a low voice. “Try again, please.”
Wheatley blinked. Charles got the impression that he was waiting for some sort of punchline, but Monty just held his gaze coldly. “Fine, that June was running around with. Really Montagu, let’s not waste time by being preposterous,” Wheatley said huffily.
“Jean.” Charles muttered without thinking.
“Oh for God’s sake, it doesn’t matter!”
He flinched first at Wheatley’s snarl, then again as a sudden crash split the air. The tea tray was on the floor, liquid leaking from shattered mugs as Jean stood over it with shaking hands. She took an uncertain step backwards, her eyes wide and terrified, before she turned and fled from the room.
Masterman let out an irritated sigh. “I think all that time in the basement has gone to your head, Montagu. You’ve been no fun recently.”
“I’ve been an entirely appropriate level of fun. I’ve just been keeping better company than you lot recently,” Monty muttered.
“They do say dealing with the dead makes people’s minds go funny,” Fleming ignored him, an excitable glint in his eyes as he nudged Masterman with his elbow.
Reggie scoffed. “That must be it, then. We all know you didn’t care back when you were desecrating that corpse!”
Charles expected Monty to laugh. On multiple occasions he’d heard Monty declare their Bill as ‘just some tramp’ who ‘didn’t matter’; he had no reason to expect that anything would be different now. But at Reggie’s words, Monty’s demeanour changed from disdainful annoyance to something Charles couldn’t read. Something guarded and withdrawn.
“We all regretted that we were never able to find our body’s identity,” Charles found himself filling the silence, parroting the statement he’d presented to Bevan at the mission’s final briefing.
Monty was still staring blankly ahead, so Charles placed a hand on his knee to try and coax him back to the present. “Ah, well.” Monty attempted to save face, giving a forced chuckle that was painful to listen to. “The demands of the job, you understand. We all have to do what we must.”
Reggie nodded impatiently. “Exactly, so just get on with it! You’re as nervous as a pauper, come on and be a man!”
The insults were nothing new to Charles. But never before had he heard them directed to Monty – or, he realised, anyone but him. Where he would normally ignore such a thing if directed at himself, the sudden terror of Monty’s masculinity being called into question had him standing abruptly. “Well, it’s been lovely to chat, but I’ll need to review those deception plans if I’m to get an answer to Bevan,” he stammered, the words practically tumbling out of his mouth. He could only hope he appeared more confident than he felt.
Charles’s hand hovered near Monty’s as he led the way to the basement, his face pale and drawn as he followed Charles like a zombie. Jean was sat in her desk chair when they arrived, her eyes red and gaze downcast as Hester spoke to her in a gentle tone. Hester stood when she noticed Charles in the doorway, an immediate interrogation ensuing on what had transpired upstairs. He glanced behind him as he spoke of how Monty had stood up for Jean, expecting the other man to be stood listening by his side.
Monty was nowhere to be seen.
November turned into December, marked by Bevan’s return from Tehran and a full launch into preparations for the next deception strategy. Yet Charles barely saw Monty outside of their shared duties in the office. What had become a slow waltz over the last several months, of bar crawls and shared meals and finishing paperwork in Monty’s living room when the winter chill made the basement uninhabitable, had suddenly ceased to exist.
Somehow, despite their assigned desks in the rest of the building, all three of them had continued to gravitate down to the basement since Mincemeat’s conclusion. Jean much to Hester’s chagrin, as frustrated colleagues struggled to track her down for their briefing transcripts. Monty would still join them there, but whereas he had previously spent a considerable proportion of his days bothering Charles about what he was working on, now he would sit hunched over his files and scarcely speak unless spoken to. And when the end of the day came, he would shove a handful of folders into his briefcase and leave without word. Charles’s worries about what Monty was smuggling out of the office had faded into insignificance; now, all he could worry about was Monty himself.
He wished he was brave enough to talk about it. It was easy to pinpoint Reggie’s emasculating insult as the aetiology of this mess, could understand how the fear of Monty’s identity being revealed would cause such all-consuming distress. Charles had poured himself into researching transsexual experiences since first finding out, had read every paper from the Hirschfield Institute that had survived the Nazi’s decimation. But all the scientific understanding in the world wouldn’t save him from the inevitable consequences of his social ineptitude. Reliving his tangent about sequentially hermaphroditic fish that night in the basement had kept him lying awake for weeks.
“Have I done something wrong?” Charles had blurted out once. The day had been trying, the morning’s briefing particularly arduous, and Monty’s silence more painful than he was able to cope with.
Monty lifted his head; Charles tried not to falter at the weariness in his expression. “How could you have ever done anything wrong, my little genius,” he murmured. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lip.
Charles nodded, letting the discomfort collect in his chest like rainwater. Monty’s attempts to stop calling Charles his genius after the Hasleden misunderstanding had led down a winding road of new terms of endearment, until he came to settle on ‘Charlie, dearest’. It was only when with undesired company or when Monty was feeling particularly worn that he ever slipped back to ‘genius’. The unexpected return of the word did nothing to ease his anxiety.
The rising tensions in the office as they got closer to their deadline also didn’t help. The likelihood of the new Operation Bodyguard being approved before Christmas was becoming slimmer by the day, as number 10 returned every draft with a new issue they were required to foresee. But someone – word in the typing pool was that it was Hester’s doing – had managed to convince Bevan that a Christmas party would do wonders to boost everyone’s morale. An intel report had landed on every desk in MI5 that morning; from the hours of 2100 on the 23rd to 0600 on the 24th, they were officially off duty.
Charles’ plan to linger in the basement for a long as possible was quickly derailed when Jean dragged him upstairs at precisely one minute to nine. A canopy of paper chains that had been hung from the cafeteria ceiling, Jean boasting proudly that the typing pool had been working on them between assignments for the last week. The wireless was playing brass band covers of traditional Christmas tunes as his colleagues talked and laughed.
But Charles was only looking for one person. It wasn’t long before he found him, arm wrestling with Fleming while a group of fellow naval lieutenants cheered loudly. Monty was wearing a waistcoat and bowtie in golden satin, almost glowing under the dimmed lamplight. Charles, in a well-loved Scandinavian jumper, suddenly felt underdressed.
“You should talk to him.”
Charles jumped, unsure when Hester had managed to sneak up on him “I don’t know what’s happened between the two of you, but he’s not been himself for weeks,” she continued, a slight pinch to her brow as she watched the scene before them. “I’m worried about him.”
Flustered, Charles resisted the urge to wring his hands together by shoving them firmly in her pockets. “What makes you think it’s anything between us?” he asked, fighting to appear less panicked than he felt.
“Because I haven’t seen you two leave work together since we received orders from Tehran.”
Any hopes of brushing off her concerns were dashed. Charles sighed, looking back at Monty. There was a carefree look to him which Charles couldn’t remember when he’d last seen; he wondered how much alcohol it had taken to get him to that state. Jean had left Charles to join the crowd around Monty and Fleming, laughing at something that Fleming’s fiancée had whispered in her ear. Was it Muriel, he wondered, or Maureen? He hoped that the right name would occur to him before he found himself in a conversation with her. But to anyone who hadn’t borne witness to Monty’s steady decline, it looked like the most normal scene in the world.
“He’s just withdrawn from me completely. It’s been weeks and I’m still only guessing at what’s caused this. I don’t want to get this wrong, Hester,” he fretted.
A soft chuckle made him twist abruptly to look at her. “You care about him. As long as you remember that above anything else, you won’t hurt each other,” Hester said simply. “Take it from an old woman; no matter what the conclusion of your talk is, it will be better than living in purgatory as you currently are.” She paused, then remarked. “And what better time than now.”
Charles froze. A panicked look at Hester didn’t stop her from disappearing into the crowd, caught like a deer in the headlights as Monty bounded towards him. He lost his footing at the last minute; Charles stumbled backwards as he caught him in shaking arms. Monty pushed his face close to Charles, his nose knocking clumsily against Charles’ cheek. A shiver went down Charles’ spine at the hot breath on his ear; as suspected, he smelled heavily of alcohol.
“Meet me in the basement in an hour,” he whispered. Time seemed to stand still for a moment. Then he was running off again, leaving Charles to stare mutely in his wake.
The subsequent hour was spent on the verge of an anxious episode. Upon frantically informing Jean of the new development, she recruited the typing pool girls to help distract him with parlour games and a generous drop of scotch. As ludicrous as it felt, Charles had to admit afterwards that trying to pass a matchbox between them using only their noses was a good way to silence his thoughts. The scotch lent him courage as he paused at the top of the basement stairs, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves as he took his first step into the unknown.
Until a massive crash sounded below him.
His first thought was that they’d been bombed. But the building remained stable, no shift beneath his feet despite the noise and his hands the only source of the tremors. Which meant the noise could have only come from one place.
Any nervous hesitance was buried beneath sudden fear as he burst through the basement door. He was confronted by the sight of the blackboard fallen flat onto the floor, its wheels still spinning in midair. In the middle of the wreckage, half-buried beneath the blackboard and amidst the scattered documents, was Monty. His hands scrabbled for purchase on the bedrock floor, fighting desperately to free himself without success.
His heart skipped a terrified beat as he rushed to Monty’s side. “Don’t move, Monty. I’ve got you,” Charles panted, grunting with effort as he tried to find a solid grip on the blackboard.
Fear lent him strength to lift it back onto its castors. Then he dropped to his knees beside Monty, helping him roll onto his back as his chest strained beneath his waistcoat. “Are you hurt?” Charles asked, his eyes flitting frantically over Monty’s body in search of obvious injury.
Monty didn’t answer. With effort he pushed himself up onto his elbows, staring in horror up at the blackboard. “It’s ruined,” he choked. The look on his face was nothing short of shattered.
Charles followed his gaze to see an indecipherable maze of smudged chalk, the few papers that were still clinging to the blackboard hanging askew on their pins. “Monty, it’s alright. Remember the memo we got earlier? We’re all off duty. I know the deadline’s soon, but no-one will expect you to have anything ready to present before morning,” he attempted to soothe him. His hand hovered over Monty’s shoulder, as though he were a feral cat Charles was offering comfort to.
The mournful noise that Monty let out was enough to stop Charles in his tracks. “It’s not – I’m not –,” he tried to start, pressing a hand to his temple as words failed him. “You don’t understand. It’s not for Bodyguard, Charlie, it’s for you.”
For the second time that evening, Charles found himself stunned into silence. A tiny part of him was relieved, having been convinced for the last ninety seconds that Monty had brought him down there purely to run through his morning briefing. But after weeks of avoidance, weeks of being kept at arm’s length, weeks of nothing, this was the last thing he had expected.
Monty was staggering to his feet before Charles could stop him, stumbling heavily as he tried to retrieve his papers from the floor. Charles was about to ask him what this was about, what could be so important that he’d risked hurting himself to achieve, when he said: “His name was Glyndwr Michael,” and everything slotted into place.
Reggie had been talking about Bill when Monty had first shut down. This wasn’t about Monty’s identity; it was about their corpse’s identity, which Monty had tried so adamantly to convince them didn’t matter. Charles could have hung his head in his hands with despair if he wasn’t trapped in Monty’s manic gaze. A scientist, jumping to conclusions. Charles should have known better than that.
“His name was Glyndwr Michael,” Monty repeated, holding out a water-stained identity card like his life depended on it. “I told you all that there weren’t any records, that Spilsbury didn’t give us anything. I lied. I lied to you all, I – I lied to you, Charlie.”
Monty’s stuttering breaths were the only sound as Charles took the identity card from him. He was certain that he had never seen it before in his life. Sure enough, when he squinted to read the faded writing, he could make out a name and an address in Cardiff. A familiar keening ache had returned to his chest, that he’d first felt when watching their Bill be loaded onto the Seraph and had haunted him ever since.
“You remember the files I kept sneaking out of the office?” Monty asked when Charles didn’t respond. Charles gave a stilted nod. “I let you all believe that it was the film script, after all that came out. But it wasn’t, it was Bill’s files. I took them home, I hid them. And I –”
“Why?”
The word left Charles’ mouth unbidden, leaving his mind scrambling for appropriate words to follow. “People were asking us who he was for weeks, and you knew all along. You lied to Bevan that there weren’t any medical records. Our mission was almost aborted because of information you were withholding. You treated Jean awfully when she called you out on it. And you knew all along.” His voice shook uncontrollably and he swallowed hard, unsure if it was from anger or fear or simply adrenaline. “Why, Monty? Why did you do it.”
“Because I thought it was the right thing to do,” Monty answered brokenly. “Because if I forgot that he was a person then I could focus on the fact that we didn’t have a choice, we were saving lives. And because – and sue me for this Charles, if you like – because I thought that maybe, he might be like me.”
Ah, Charles thought dimly. So this wasn’t about Bill’s identity as opposed to Monty’s, but the two intertwined inextricably together. Yet again he had come to an incorrect conclusion.
There were tears streaming down Monty’s face, and he rubbed his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. “Have you ever thought about if I were found dead tomorrow, that it wouldn’t be Ewen Montagu who they’d plan a funeral for?” he retorted, fixing Charles with a glassy-eyed stare. “People who are happy with their lot in life don’t tend to go eating rat poison. I couldn’t stop wondering if he wanted to be remembered as Glyndwr. If maybe we’d be doing a mitzvah by giving him a new identity and remembering him as a hero instead.”
A terrible hitching breath interrupted him, before he managed to choke out “Because no-one is bloody well going to do the same for me!”
The confession held such an awful truth that Charles almost staggered backwards. But then it struck him badly Monty’s hands were shaking, how all the colour had drained from his face as he swayed uncertainly on his feet.
His knees gave way just as Charles rushed to steady him, guiding them both clumsily down to the floor. With difficulty he found Monty’s pulse in his wrist, a reedy, uncertain thrum beneath his skin. “You should take your bindings off,” he said, concern spiking at the haggard, noisy breathing coming from the broken man in his arms.
Monty shook his head in the crook of Charles’ neck, a desolate sob escaping him. “Monty, please. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Charles pleaded, his face burning red as he processed the accidental connotations of his own words. Yes he’d been with Monty without his bindings before, but not quite in the context he’d managed to infer.
A heady, uncomfortable laugh ripped from Monty’s chest. “What does it matter,” he moaned, shaking his head again. “What does it matter if Ewen Montagu has a heart attack? He’ll stop existing as soon as my body goes cold. The eulogy they read will be for someone else. No one will remember Ewen bloody Montagu.”
There was a slight blue tint to Monty’s lips; Charles knew that the time for caution had long-since passed. “Monty, Monty; Ewen,” he almost shouted, his tone rising in desperation. “I will. It doesn’t matter if they bury you in a dress under a name that’s not yours. I will remember you, Ewen Montagu. For the rest of my life and beyond.”
Monty was startled out of his sobs to blink dumbly up at him. Charles took a deep breath before he moved his hand to cup Monty’s cheek, brushing away tears with his thumb. “And as a hero, no doubt.”
Monty’s breath caught in his throat again, his stomach flexing sharply beneath where Charles’ other hand had come to rest at his waist. “This wasn’t how I wanted this to go. I’m making you miss the party,” he murmured between sniffs.
Charles could see the deflection for what it was but allowed him that much. At least he hadn’t collapsed into sobs again, still a victory no matter how small. “I’m not really one for parties anyway,” he replied honestly. “How was tonight supposed to go?"
“You were supposed to come downstairs to see all of Bill’s papers on the blackboard,” he explained miserably, slumping against Charles’ chest. “You seemed so upset when you told Reggie and his lot that we couldn’t find him, the real him. I couldn’t sleep knowing I’d done that. I had to fix it.” His expression threatened to crumple again, tears spilling renewed down his cheek. “So I’ve been tracing him for weeks, following every lead that Spilsbury left me with. I thought you’d be so happy with me. I was standing on a chair putting up the finishing touches when… I don’t know, I guess I slipped.”
Monty trailed off uncertainly. His hand ghosted over his cheekbone, where Charles could just about see the beginnings of a bruise under the pale basement lights. In all the emotion that had followed, Charles had almost forgotten what had brought him sprinting down the stairs in the first place. “That’ll hurt tomorrow,” he commented softly, smoothing his thumb over the mottled skin.
“I think a lot of things will hurt tomorrow,” Monty groaned. “I’m, uhm, I’m afraid I’ve had rather a lot to drink, my boy. Dutch courage, and all that.”
He chuckled at the idea that Monty thought this was new information. But then the thought occurred to him that Monty was drunk, would probably be struggling out of Charles’ arms if he had all his wits about him. “I, err, sorry Monty, I’ve taken advantage of you,” he stammered, trying to loosen his grip enough to let him escape without outright dropping him on the floor.
Monty whined at the loss of contact. He wrapped his arms around Charles’ torso to hold himself in place; Charles was reminded of a gecko clinging to a vertical surface, albeit a lot less effortless. “Please don’t let go.”
The whisper was so quiet that Charles barely heard it over his heart beating in his ears. Slowly, tentatively, he let his hands settle back where they’d been cradling Monty against his chest. All the tension disappeared from Monty’s body as he closed his eyes and breathed out.
“Is this… alright?” Charles asked, searching Monty’s face for any sign of discomfort.
Monty hummed in response. Charles took the chance to look at him properly, to note the dark circles beneath his eyes and flush to his cheeks. At least he didn’t look so frightfully grey now that he was breathing evenly. But Charles thought back to how erratic he’d been before his collapse; fervently, feverishly trying to explain himself as his body broke down before him. He touched the back of his hand lightly to Monty’s forehead. His suspicions were confirmed by the warmth radiating from clammy skin.
Cracking his eyes open, Monty gave a questioning hum. Charles tried not to drown in those beautiful, bloodshot eyes. “Ewen. When was the last time you slept?”
Monty’s brow furrowed slightly. “It must have been recent. Maybe on the first night? No, that can’t be right, tonight’s the third night…” he muttered, his words slurring together. “I can’t remember.”
“It’s alright, it doesn’t matter,” Charles soothed him as he saw Monty’s eyes fill with tears. Monty nodded, seeming suddenly more fragile than he had done all evening.
While Charles was loathe to disturb him, perfectly content with the feeling of Monty’s head rested on his collarbone, he knew that they couldn’t stay there forever. “What do you want to happen now, Monty?” he asked. The question made his chest tighten, nerves reignited after lying dormant since he first stepped foot in the basement.
Monty stirred against his chest. “Take me home, Charlie.”
Crestfallen, Charles nodded. Of course he’d got his hopes up, had dared to let his imagination wonder what the rest of the night might culminate into considering everything that had passed between them. “Of course,” he said, trying to keep the devastation from his voice. “Do you think you’ll manage the walk? I know your flat isn’t far, but we can try and call a car if it’s easier.”
“No, no,” Monty moaned, squeezing his eyes closed as he shook his head. Charles waited patiently for him to find the right words amidst his addled state. When he eventually opened his eyes, it was with stark clarity that he looked into Charles’ eyes and placed a steady hand on his cheek.
“Take me home with you.”