Whumptober WIP dump
Oct. 7th, 2024 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gattycatPrompts: Day 1: panic attack, Day 2: trust issues, Day 6: unhealthy coping mechanisms, Day 9: obsession, Day 20: emotional angst, shoulder to cry on, permission to die, Day 29: fatigue, Day 30: recovery
Characters: Algy, Biggles, ambient Mullen, Mahoney &c
Pairings: Biggles/Algy
Words: 3337
No beta, we die like men &c
September 1917, Maranique
When Algy Lacey is seventeen and five months, Major Mullen takes him into the Squadron office, and sits him down.
‘You are not, under any circumstance, allowed to die.’
Algy blinks. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Now you may think this is an unreasonable request to make of an officer posted to the front, but let me explain the logic behind it.’
‘Go on, sir.’
Mullen selects a cigarette but does not light it, only rolls it between his fingers. ‘Bigglesworth is our best flyer, I don’t think there’s any argument there.’
‘No, sir.’
And there isn’t. Algy has known it before he’d even set foot in France, the whole squadron knows it and so do half the airmen on the line. He feels a rather embarrassing pride to be known as a member of 266, and to fly in Biggles’ own flight.
‘Few men have held up under the strain for as long as he has - especially when they are of a naturally nervy disposition, which I’m afraid to say was clear from the first day he arrived in my office - and I take great care to keep the men under my command from walking too close to the edge. If you understand my meaning?’
Algy thinks he does. He has seen more than one man flinch at a dropped plate, stop speaking for days at a time, shake so violently they cannot pour their own drinks. He has his own nightmares, his private horrors, that he hopes are not so obvious to those around him. And Biggles - yes. He has seen him standing right on the edge, more than once. After Batson went West, he thought it was over, that Biggles had stepped over - but by some miracle he came back.
And now he understands what Mullen is saying to him.
‘If you were going to die you should have done it already. Now you’ve survived long enough under his watch, he thinks he gets to keep you.’
Algy colours. ‘Oh.’
‘If he loses you… Well. We need him. The war needs him.’ Mullen finally lights the cigarette, the tremble in his own hands making the match-flame waiver. Algy forgets, sometimes, that the CO isn’t so much older than him. Perhaps a couple of years at best, though there is already a speckle of white at his temples there is a deep groove worn between his eyebrows. ‘And he needs you.’
Algy swallows, unable to move in his chair. It is as though a weight has settled around his shoulders, a responsibility he doesn’t not fully understand yet, but it is there, close and heavy and inescapable.
‘I understand, sir.’
Mullen smiles, faintly. ‘I thought you might.’
Early April 1918, Chateau de Rambures outside Amiens
The first of the spring roses are showing their buds across the Chateau gardens after an unreasonably warm end to March - though it has not lasted. Algy has wrapped his scarf twice around his neck on the long drive down from Maranique to the country outside Amiens, and he worries there might be a frost that will kill the roses in their sleep. It would be a waste, such beautiful things snipped short before they have a chance to unfurl.
It is his eighteenth birthday and he did not think anyone knew it, until Biggles arrived at his room after breakfast, scowling and ordering him into a tender. Biggles explained on the drive over that Mullen had put their flight on the late patrol, so they had most of the day to themselves, should they want to do anything, and he definitely hadn’t begged use of a tender, despite being overheard in the Squadron office doing so by several officers and two ground mechanics. He did not explain where they are going, or what the bag on the back seat is for, and Algy has learnt that this is not any sort of intentional secret keeping on Biggles’ part, it is simply that he knows what is happening, and therefore it’s beside the point whether anyone else does.
They wound through the rural backcountry that is at once familiar and strange. The low roll of the land, the Ash and Hazel and Beech, should be Kent or Sussex - but the fields are laid out differently, they are too large and the roads run through them unbounded. Biggles did not consult a map, though at one point they do make a screeching reverse up a narrow road and three point turn that nearly puts them in the ditch.
Then there it was, at the end of a tree-lined road, the Chateau. It is shut up, the occupants gone south at the start of the war, but Biggles knocks on the door and gets a key from a groundskeeper to a gate in a wall, and they go through into the neat gardens beyond.
‘It’s a rose garden,’ says Biggles, standing stiffly just inside.
Algy looks around, a smile spreading across his face. ‘Yes. I can see that. Gosh, they’re making something of an effort aren’t they.’ There are an array of different varieties, only a few in bud, but all neatly labelled and arranged in rows of beds spreading out from the red-bricked towers, like something from a mediaeval chivalric romance.
Biggles sidles off and Algy corners the groundskeeper, whose French is a little thick, but he manages to find out about the oldest rose bush still struggling on, and the new cuttings they had been nursing into life at the outbreak of war, and the In the distance, he can hear the faint sound of the guns, when the wind blows their way, but mostly, it is cold and fresh and golden, the sky blue as egg-shell, the green leaves of the plans lush and verdant and it is everything he loves about gardening, the simplicity of it, the sense of being beyond himself, of working at something that will last long after him. If he dies tomorrow, there could be a sunflower or a geranium or a rose still growing where he planted it. He is not interested in immortality, or legacy, it is only that it is a comfort, to know if even in some small way, his life left some sort of impression. He mattered, at least once.
Biggles returns with the bag from the car, cigarette wedged between his lips as he waits for Algy to finish his negotiations with the groundskeeper over taking a cutting or two. The soil around Maranique shouldn’t be so different, perhaps he can create something by the mess, something that might still be there when the war is over and they take down the hangers and the huts and there’s no more spilled oil and bullet casings and blood.
Once he has an agreement he can return for some softwood cuttings in late spring, the groundskeeper goes and they are alone. Biggles shucks off his great coat and spreads it on the grass in lieu of a blanket, then he sets out two glasses and a bottle of lemonade, a lump of nondescript cheese, an unopened box of crackers, a few apples, a bar of chocolate, a tin of sardines, and a shrivelled piece of tongue in wax cloth that Algy thinks might have actually been meant for the bin. He doesn’t know if this is all the mess kitchen would spare, or if Biggles actually broke in and stole the first things he saw.
They eat, and Biggles produces a hip flask from somewhere that he takes nips from while crumbling a cracker very slowly, sneaking glances at Algy. It dawns on him that Biggles is nervous about whether Algy is enjoying himself - he thinks he gets to keep you - and Algy feels an unexpected flutter in his chest.
Hesitantly, he smiles, ‘I couldn’t have wanted anything better.’ And he means it.
Biggles says nothing, just makes a small, nondescript noise and lights another cigarette. ‘We shouldn’t be too long about getting back,’ he says, ‘the C.O. said the show tonight requires a bit of explanation.’
‘Right ho.’
But they lie back, side by side, watching the wide blue sky, sharing a cigarette and sometimes their fingers brush together in a way that doesn’t feel like school at all, and Algy thinks he can smell the roses that have yet to bloom.
And maybe - maybe he gets to keep Biggles too.
April 1918, Abba Sud
It is so brief it is almost nothing, the most tentative of movements. Algy is stood beneath the palm trees, tangled up with the horror of what Biggles has just said - I’ve got to go on - to the end - you see that, don’t you? - that he is not paying attention when Biggles’s hand comes to rest lightly on his hip, and his mouth dips to brush their mouths together. It is feather brief, barely a hint of warmth, chapped lips, before Biggles draws back. Algy follows him, struck with confusion and an impulsive desire to ask no questions and simply pull him close.
But then he is gone, hopping up into the Pfalz, a flash of fair hair golden in the desert sun, and the plane picks up speed over the sand. The last time he ever sees him, maybe, the last time they are ever together, alive.
Perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps it will never get to mean anything at all.
Late April 1918, the mediterranean sea
On the boat home from Palestine, Biggles slips into Algy’s bunk and grips his wrist tightly, eyes glittering.
‘Tell me,’ says Algy, and Biggles does.
With the fluency gifted by the dark, he speaks, unravelling the staccato panic of their frantic few days in Palestine. Algy understood a little of it as it was happening, but the details Biggles drops as carelessly as sand knocked from his shoes are like little punctures of shock, a hundred tiny nicks of the blade that lay him low. Algy is angry, and frightened and confused, in half a mind to find Colonel Raymond and punch him and take a court martial for the privilege, the other half wondering if Mullen is right, and Biggles is due a posting to Home Establishment. Because he knows what is going to happen otherwise: they will return to 266, and the ice that covers the glass inside their draughty rooms, and the early mornings, and the tension, drawn to snapping point, constant, constant vigilance for the bullet that will end it all - until one morning he will wake up longing for it.
‘I thought I watched you die and it was my fault.’ Biggles’ voice is so rough it is painful to hear. ‘I saw you crash. They brought back a body and I - I didn’t care what happened to me any more. I couldn’t do it.’
Biggles has grasped his hand and is holding it so tightly it is as though he can anchor him there, undo the past horror through force of will.
‘I had a plan - I didn’t know how to finish the job, but it would go a way to doing it if I were to torch Zabala, and I knew I must be discovered if I undertook something so brazen, and I meant to stop a bullet. But then it wasn’t you.’ He pauses for a moment, the air thick between them. ‘And the rest came off,’ he says, almost casual - almost - but they are far beyond that now.
He thinks he gets to keep you.
There is something coiled in him close to breaking, he is squeezing Algy’s wrist tighter and tighter, and Algy is frightened.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Algy repeats, and for the first time, he sees Biggles truly cry.
He does not release his grip so they lie flush, as Biggles sobs, body shaking, and Algy is unable to touch him.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Biggles when he finally draws himself together. ‘I’m sorry. That was - I confess I rather lost it at Zabala too. I - I’m not cracking up.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’
He has never seen anyone cry like this, and suddenly he feels very eighteen, and not at all a war pilot of many months’ fighting, and as though there must be a grown up somewhere who can tell him how to put it all right. It is the revelation, like a blow, that there is no one. Nothing. The world is frightening, and unsafe, and chaotic, and it can take a man to pieces and leave him with nothing and no one to cleave to.
So he strokes Biggles’ hair, because that seems like something you would do to comfort a child. Strokes his back. Lets him cry and says nothing about it. They only have each other, and if there is nothing else he can do, let him be a solid body, alive and real and present. He is not clever, or wise, or quick, but he can be there.
When Biggles kisses him now, it is with desperation and confusion, a muddle of the hitched breath from crying and the death grip he has kept a hold of him with the whole time they have been talking, and Algy does not know if it is a kiss or a frightened attempt to merge them together, to make Algy safe by eroding the lines between them, so their hearts beat together, and while one lives, they both live.
In the dark, the ship rolls and thrums, and Algy lets Biggles take what he needs.
He will always let him take it all.
November 1918, Maranique
Algy is not allowed to die. He knows this. Each time he looks at the fine lines that at eighteen, already mark Biggles’ mouth, each time Biggles’ fingers twitch towards the whisky bottle, or tremble lighting a cigarette. Algy knows his life stands between Biggles and destruction.
And then he falls.
Algy is in a tight line with a yellow Fokker, chasing its tail with increasing desperation, when a Camel streaks across his nose, close enough he can see Biggles fighting with the control column, there is no doubt who it is. Then the machine is swallowed into a spin, plunging faster and faster - it’s a bluff, it must be, he’s seen Biggles do this before, pulling out at the last minute to shake a Hun.
But he doesn’t.
The Camel drops like a stone.
Algy watches it, in cold fascination, the yellow Fokker forgotten. Surviving will only matter, if Biggles pulls out of the spin.
A line of lead rips through his fuselage and the small windshield shatters like ice but he does not move.
The Camel must be barely a few hundred feet above the ground, when it finally pulls out, jerky and unstable and it is too late anyway - it slams into a line of poplars and a moment later the bright red flame of a petrol fire blooms amongst the green.
Another bullet skims Algy’s dashboard, smashing the altimeter, and at last he spins his plane round, moving without thinking.
What is there to think?
It is over. It is all over.
The yellow Fokker cuts across his view, and he turns his machine to meet it head on. Good. It will be a violent end.
Then a red flare shoots from the CO’s machine - go home, show cancelled - and Algy follows automatically, his muscles moving from long repetition.
He allows himself one last look back, to the burning wreck of the camel.
And there, small against the ground, the unmistakable figure of a man, surrounded by German soldiers.
The hysterical relief that floods his body is so strong his hand shakes on the control column and his machine dips and rises with the sobs that work through him, the wind drying his tears as they fall.
They land in a mess of broken planes, Mahoney dashing between each pilot looking for Biggles, Mac sitting on the hump of his machine, smoking aggressively, snapping at any mechanics coming near him and Algy does not get out of his plane, just rests his forehead on the broken dashboard, until Mullen is shaking his shoulder - checking he is not dead - and breaking the news.
‘I know,’ he says, ‘I saw him on the ground.’
‘No - Lacey - the war.’
Armistice.
December 1918, London
It has taken longer than thought for Biggles’s leg to heal enough for him to walk - limp - out of France, and in the confusion and collapse of the German military he is briefly lost, then found, then lost again, then discovered in a Belgian Red Cross outpost, correctly tagged and handed over to a contingent of British prisoners of war bound for a troop transport in Dieppe, at which no one was expecting him, so he is wedged into a deckchair on the freezing deck and left overnight before eventually the orders come to sail, and he wakes to a layer of frozen dew across his great coat, and a rime of frost beneath his nose and around his mouth on the bristles of the scraggly growth of stubble he has not been given the opportunity to shave.
Algy waits on the concourse of Victoria station feeling self-conscious in his plain flannel suit and overcoat; on all sides men arrive in drifts of khaki and navy blue, and he feels ashamed to have been demobbed so quickly. There was little need of flyers after the cease fire, beyond flying his machine back to England, and the discharge papers had arrived with haste.
He does not know if Biggles will be on this train, or any of the trains today, or tomorrow, but a friend got word to him that Biggles had passed through a clearing post in Eastbourne, and will surely be for London soon. He’s kicked around the station for the past two days, smoking and picking at his cuticles and telling himself he’ll just wait for one more train, just one more, because he doesn’t know what he’d do if Biggles got off the train anyway. He’s in a hotel nearby, because the idea of returning to Wales makes him feel mildly hysterical. There’d be questions of what he might do next, and his current shortlist is walk into the sea, drink until he throws up, or possibly just climb up a big mountain and sit there for a year or so.
It is a confusing miracle, then, when the crowds part, and there, on the platform, is Biggles.
Algy stops breathing.
He is leaning on a crutch and limping badly, and it is a blessing, then, that he has no luggage to carry, nothing to his name but the clothes he crashed in and a greatcoat that seems three sizes too big - or perhaps it is that he has shrunk down to a human size here amidst the mundanity of England.
Algy starts forward, stops, then curses as his forgotten cigarette burns his fingers. If Biggles has spotted him, then he makes no sign of it, making his slow, stumbling way along the platform and Algy cannot bear it. He makes a decision, marches forward and stands in Biggles’ way.
‘You made it then,’ he says, lighting two cigarettes and holding one out to Biggles.
Close up he can see the scraggle of stubble, and the lines that have grown deeper sound his mouth and between his brows, and the deep, bruised shadows under his eyes. He does not quite seem able to focus, gaze drifting across Algy’s face, over his shoulder, and Algy wonders how much morphine they have plied him with. His leg hardly seems strong enough to hold him; Algy slips an arm around him to take his weight and it’s deeply strange how little Biggles reacts, how little he registers.
They move slowly towards the cab rank.
‘What now?’ says Biggles. His voice seems rough with disuse.
‘I don’t know.’ Algy shifts to take a little more of his weight, leading towards the cab rank. ‘I don’t know.’
