Trope ficlet: Only One Bed
Aug. 22nd, 2024 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tweagueOkay, so this one was pure self-indulgence. I'm 100% certain that someone else in this fandom will already have written basically this fic (and if you know where, please point me to it because it is relevant to my interests); in fact I'm 85% certain I've actually written this fic before myself, something in the order of 10-15 years ago, somewhere in someone's comments section in some defunct LJ. But hey, this is the version of this fic I wrote this week.
Trope-fic prompted bygattycat, who asked for There Was Only One Bed, with an emphasis on cuddles. So I immediately went to That Bit Where Biggles And Von Stalhein Have To Share A Turret For A Couple Of Days While Trying To Rescue Marie in the middle of 'Looks Back'. Only of course in my head canon they've already been sleeping together on the regular for a while now, so this is less the UST and/or shenanigans that Only One Bed is meant to be for, and more just...comfortable. With a little conversation.
As I said, purely self-indulgent. c.1400 words, Biggles/von Stalhein established relationship, non-explicit (there is An Kiss, that's about the most of it.)
Biggles had just sat up and resigned himself to his fourth cigarette when he heard the footsteps coming up the spiral staircase: the step, drag; step, drag that he had sharpened his ears to for so many years over so many countries that now it was more familiar than his own.
“How is it possible that you have stayed alive as long as you have when you walk like a herd of elephants?” Erich grumbled, and Biggles could imagine him reaching out, careful and precise, to touch the stone lintel above his head, the doorpost to his left, to guide him into the little turret room.
“Sorry,” said James, and honestly felt it. “I thought I might warm up if I walked about a bit.”
“Did you?”
“Not noticeably,” he admitted.
A soft flump and a crackling of ancient sticks, as a bundle was dropped on the floor beside him. “Perhaps we should stand turns to sleep in the daytime when it’s warmer. We’re hardly swamped with other business.”
“Are you staying?” asked Biggles, in surprise. “I thought you reckoned there were fleas up here.”
“Since I cannot sleep down below, on account of the elephants, I thought I might try my luck with the fleas instead.”
Now Erich was standing closer to the window Biggles could just make out his face: the faint twist of wry amusement about his mouth that he could hear in his voice.
“Sorry,” he repeated. “I knew I was keeping you awake last night because of the hellish cold floor down there. I hoped at least you would be able to get a good night’s sleep tonight if I was up here.”
“Yes, and see how well that worked,” said Erich, gruffly. “Move out of the way so I can lay the rugs out properly.”
Biggles stood, taking his blanket with him, and let von Stalhein fuss about with the rugs. He didn’t lay them out side by side, he noticed, but one atop the other, making a thicker layer between them and the floor.
He grinned. “Don’t you think you’ll be a bit cramped?”
Erich grunted, non-committally. “Since it appears I have little chance of sleeping unless you sleep, my first priority is to make you as comfortable as possible. I can sleep anywhere, if moderately undisturbed.”
“Famous last words,” Biggles muttered, but lay down towards one edge, facing the wall of the cramped little room. “It would be a jolly sight more pleasant if there were curtains to keep the breeze out.”
“I think Reinhardt and his men might notice a nice cheerful chintz at the window.”
Erich lay down behind him, and moved up close; pulled the two blankets over the both of them. One arm went over James’ own, resting over as much of him as he could cover, while the trailing edge of his shabby macintosh he pulled over his side. One leg rested over his. James could feel the fastenings of his jacket pressing against his back, before the fabric gradually took on the temperature between their bodies, and he could begin to feel the warmth of him.
The blessedly warm fingers curled around his own cold ones; and he squeezed them, gratefully, pulling the arm in closer.
“You are always cold.” James could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of his neck. “How you thought you would sleep up here by yourself - “
“I didn’t manage to sleep much in this configuration last night,” he pointed out. “What makes you think tonight will be different?”
“You are more tired tonight,” Erich pointed out. “Also, I am not unwilling to knock you out if the situation becomes desperate.”
James huffed a laugh. “There’s that famous Prussian pragmatism.”
The double layer of rugs on top of the mess of twigs and leaves from the old rooks’ nests was making a difference, Biggles thought: he couldn’t feel the chill radiating up from the stone floor and straight into his bones as he could the night before. If he could only stop himself thinking about the chilly autumn breeze through the arrow-slit window for long enough, he might even manage to drop off.
Erich pulled the blankets closer around them.
When his face brushed the nape of James’ neck, he could feel the stubble, an unfamiliar rasp; but the scent was purely him, the cigarettes, the soap, the - whatever that indefinable thing was, that he had known for so long.
It wasn’t exactly a shock any more, to be this close, to smell that scent, to feel this warmth: it had been some years since von Stalhein had come to England, and they had managed to work out what James was certain Erich would have called their ‘amicable arrangement’, in a tone of deepest irony. Yet every time it was a surprise, an unexpected benediction, because who on earth would have imagined that he could ever have this? And sometimes it was fire and sweat and desperation, and sometimes it was -
- warmth.
“James - “
He opened his eyes - realised they had been closed for a few seconds. He was drifting already.
“If we do manage to get Marie out to England safely - “
“A big ‘if’,” James murmured. “But go on.”
“Will you ask her to marry you?”
Erich’s hand was still wrapped about his own.
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“I already asked her once. I have had plenty of chances to ask her again in the years since. She gave me her reply, and I have accepted it.”
“She might have changed it.”
“I doubt it. She always was a better judge of character than I. She fell in love with you at first sight.”
In the silence, in the voice speaking so close to his ear, James could hear the very, very faint weight on she.
“In any case, it is too late for me,” von Stalhein went on.
James turned his head; but without rearranging them both he couldn’t turn enough to see the other man’s face, even if the light had been good enough.
“You’re not that old.”
“Am I not? Some days I feel I am. But that was not what I meant.”
Erich’s arm tightened. It had been an odd thing, those first few times - to be so surrounded by another person, to be able to feel that slim strength, that heated skin, all about him, at his back, chest, hips, neck. To be so wrapped about by him.
“No, I won’t. At least - no, I don’t think so,” said James, with scrupulous honesty. Perhaps it was easier having this conversation in the dark. Goodness knows they had been studiously not having this conversation for the last few days. “My God, it was a lifetime ago. We’re neither of us the same people. I’d like to get to know whoever it is that Marie has turned into - and I hope she wants to get to know me. But she hasn’t been part of the life I’ve lived - she never could be.”
“You said back in England that your heart had been in cold storage ever since that time.”
“Well - part of it, at any rate,” he amended. “In a way, I’ve always loved her - a nineteen year old’s love that’s never quite gone away.”
He felt Erich shift, slightly. “If - this - becomes a complication - “
“No,” said James, and turned under the encircling arm. “No. No selfless renunciations, no heroic gestures. I’m too old for that, even if you aren’t. When I catch hold of something I want, then I hang onto it like grim death. And I haven’t spent the last thirty years trying to catch hold of you just to let go now.”
“For most of that time you were trying to catch me for a prison sentence.”
“A technicality.”
“Times change. You may change your mind.”
He could only see the faintest shadowy shape of him; so instead he leaned close, found his lips by guess and by God. His mouth was always a searing heat: familiar now, but still a joyful surprise. And his arms about him were warm beneath the blanket, against the chill of the air.
“No,” he said. “I’m not nineteen. And whatever part of me I shut away that night - I haven’t missed it. I would miss this.”
Trope-fic prompted by
gattycat, who asked for There Was Only One Bed, with an emphasis on cuddles. So I immediately went to That Bit Where Biggles And Von Stalhein Have To Share A Turret For A Couple Of Days While Trying To Rescue Marie in the middle of 'Looks Back'. Only of course in my head canon they've already been sleeping together on the regular for a while now, so this is less the UST and/or shenanigans that Only One Bed is meant to be for, and more just...comfortable. With a little conversation. As I said, purely self-indulgent. c.1400 words, Biggles/von Stalhein established relationship, non-explicit (there is An Kiss, that's about the most of it.)
Biggles had just sat up and resigned himself to his fourth cigarette when he heard the footsteps coming up the spiral staircase: the step, drag; step, drag that he had sharpened his ears to for so many years over so many countries that now it was more familiar than his own.
“How is it possible that you have stayed alive as long as you have when you walk like a herd of elephants?” Erich grumbled, and Biggles could imagine him reaching out, careful and precise, to touch the stone lintel above his head, the doorpost to his left, to guide him into the little turret room.
“Sorry,” said James, and honestly felt it. “I thought I might warm up if I walked about a bit.”
“Did you?”
“Not noticeably,” he admitted.
A soft flump and a crackling of ancient sticks, as a bundle was dropped on the floor beside him. “Perhaps we should stand turns to sleep in the daytime when it’s warmer. We’re hardly swamped with other business.”
“Are you staying?” asked Biggles, in surprise. “I thought you reckoned there were fleas up here.”
“Since I cannot sleep down below, on account of the elephants, I thought I might try my luck with the fleas instead.”
Now Erich was standing closer to the window Biggles could just make out his face: the faint twist of wry amusement about his mouth that he could hear in his voice.
“Sorry,” he repeated. “I knew I was keeping you awake last night because of the hellish cold floor down there. I hoped at least you would be able to get a good night’s sleep tonight if I was up here.”
“Yes, and see how well that worked,” said Erich, gruffly. “Move out of the way so I can lay the rugs out properly.”
Biggles stood, taking his blanket with him, and let von Stalhein fuss about with the rugs. He didn’t lay them out side by side, he noticed, but one atop the other, making a thicker layer between them and the floor.
He grinned. “Don’t you think you’ll be a bit cramped?”
Erich grunted, non-committally. “Since it appears I have little chance of sleeping unless you sleep, my first priority is to make you as comfortable as possible. I can sleep anywhere, if moderately undisturbed.”
“Famous last words,” Biggles muttered, but lay down towards one edge, facing the wall of the cramped little room. “It would be a jolly sight more pleasant if there were curtains to keep the breeze out.”
“I think Reinhardt and his men might notice a nice cheerful chintz at the window.”
Erich lay down behind him, and moved up close; pulled the two blankets over the both of them. One arm went over James’ own, resting over as much of him as he could cover, while the trailing edge of his shabby macintosh he pulled over his side. One leg rested over his. James could feel the fastenings of his jacket pressing against his back, before the fabric gradually took on the temperature between their bodies, and he could begin to feel the warmth of him.
The blessedly warm fingers curled around his own cold ones; and he squeezed them, gratefully, pulling the arm in closer.
“You are always cold.” James could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of his neck. “How you thought you would sleep up here by yourself - “
“I didn’t manage to sleep much in this configuration last night,” he pointed out. “What makes you think tonight will be different?”
“You are more tired tonight,” Erich pointed out. “Also, I am not unwilling to knock you out if the situation becomes desperate.”
James huffed a laugh. “There’s that famous Prussian pragmatism.”
The double layer of rugs on top of the mess of twigs and leaves from the old rooks’ nests was making a difference, Biggles thought: he couldn’t feel the chill radiating up from the stone floor and straight into his bones as he could the night before. If he could only stop himself thinking about the chilly autumn breeze through the arrow-slit window for long enough, he might even manage to drop off.
Erich pulled the blankets closer around them.
When his face brushed the nape of James’ neck, he could feel the stubble, an unfamiliar rasp; but the scent was purely him, the cigarettes, the soap, the - whatever that indefinable thing was, that he had known for so long.
It wasn’t exactly a shock any more, to be this close, to smell that scent, to feel this warmth: it had been some years since von Stalhein had come to England, and they had managed to work out what James was certain Erich would have called their ‘amicable arrangement’, in a tone of deepest irony. Yet every time it was a surprise, an unexpected benediction, because who on earth would have imagined that he could ever have this? And sometimes it was fire and sweat and desperation, and sometimes it was -
- warmth.
“James - “
He opened his eyes - realised they had been closed for a few seconds. He was drifting already.
“If we do manage to get Marie out to England safely - “
“A big ‘if’,” James murmured. “But go on.”
“Will you ask her to marry you?”
Erich’s hand was still wrapped about his own.
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“I already asked her once. I have had plenty of chances to ask her again in the years since. She gave me her reply, and I have accepted it.”
“She might have changed it.”
“I doubt it. She always was a better judge of character than I. She fell in love with you at first sight.”
In the silence, in the voice speaking so close to his ear, James could hear the very, very faint weight on she.
“In any case, it is too late for me,” von Stalhein went on.
James turned his head; but without rearranging them both he couldn’t turn enough to see the other man’s face, even if the light had been good enough.
“You’re not that old.”
“Am I not? Some days I feel I am. But that was not what I meant.”
Erich’s arm tightened. It had been an odd thing, those first few times - to be so surrounded by another person, to be able to feel that slim strength, that heated skin, all about him, at his back, chest, hips, neck. To be so wrapped about by him.
“No, I won’t. At least - no, I don’t think so,” said James, with scrupulous honesty. Perhaps it was easier having this conversation in the dark. Goodness knows they had been studiously not having this conversation for the last few days. “My God, it was a lifetime ago. We’re neither of us the same people. I’d like to get to know whoever it is that Marie has turned into - and I hope she wants to get to know me. But she hasn’t been part of the life I’ve lived - she never could be.”
“You said back in England that your heart had been in cold storage ever since that time.”
“Well - part of it, at any rate,” he amended. “In a way, I’ve always loved her - a nineteen year old’s love that’s never quite gone away.”
He felt Erich shift, slightly. “If - this - becomes a complication - “
“No,” said James, and turned under the encircling arm. “No. No selfless renunciations, no heroic gestures. I’m too old for that, even if you aren’t. When I catch hold of something I want, then I hang onto it like grim death. And I haven’t spent the last thirty years trying to catch hold of you just to let go now.”
“For most of that time you were trying to catch me for a prison sentence.”
“A technicality.”
“Times change. You may change your mind.”
He could only see the faintest shadowy shape of him; so instead he leaned close, found his lips by guess and by God. His mouth was always a searing heat: familiar now, but still a joyful surprise. And his arms about him were warm beneath the blanket, against the chill of the air.
“No,” he said. “I’m not nineteen. And whatever part of me I shut away that night - I haven’t missed it. I would miss this.”
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Date: 2024-08-23 09:58 am (UTC)